


Passing Clouds

by MercuryGray



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Inspired by Fanfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 84
Words: 38,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25942276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: A collection of drabbles, prompts and writing exercises related to The Darkening Sky.
Comments: 29
Kudos: 23





	1. Joan

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Darkening Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24221827) by [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray). 



Joan Warren had never started anything for the sole purpose of pursuing a man.

She had not taken a place at Goucher simply because it was handy for the men of Johns Hopkins, had not taken a job in the maps and graphs department of the Government Printing office because it put her in close proximity to the civil service, and she most certainly had not joined the paratroopers because she was convinced that was where the best dates were to be found. She had done all these things because they brought her closer to her own goals, a four-year degree she could turn into a job, a job that made use of her skills and talents, a unit within the army that demanded (and received) the best a person had to offer.

And if all those places were where men were to be found…that was simply a coincidence. If being the best meant being where the boys were, then that was where Joan was going to be. In her mind, girls sat on the sidelines and cheered - but a woman would get in and pitch. And that was precisely what she intended to do.

It was one of the reasons she hadn’t gone home to Wyoming when she was done with school. Her mother had gotten a little weepy over it - but what was waiting for her in Wyoming, except tea-parties with the neighbors? Endless at-home afternoons, filled with optimistic, pointed remarks about how much growing up Mrs. So-and-so’s son had done at college, and my, what a handsome young man he turned out to be, and wasn’t it just amazing that he had lettered in three sports and captained the football team?

No one ever said a thing about Joan’s college letters, or her grade point average, or the state and school records she’d set on the track field. None of those things seemed to make her a thing to be desired.

And, to be perfectly honest about Mrs. So-and-so’s son, he might have been handsome, but the average letterman in college had bored her. Oh, it was all well and good to let a boy take you to the movies on a Friday night, and let him get into some heavy petting in the car on the way home - but to tie oneself to a man like that? A man who could speak very eloquently on the universal rights of man in a philosophy class, and claimed he liked a girl with a sense of humor who loved the outdoors, but who, as soon as you were married, demanded that you hang up your tools before you’d had a chance to accomplish anything, to have dinner on the table every evening by six, keep the house immaculate, and produce two point five children while maintaining your figure?

If that was married life, it could count her out.

Lieutenant Sutton had the right idea, making the army a career. Her mother couldn’t understand it - but Uncle Jack and Aunt Michie did. Aunt Michie, who’d practically mothered her through prep school and college, who’d had a career of her own before marrying a man twenty years older than her, who had been known and respected in the Paris art world, and who knew, as she always did, what her niece needed after the cap and gown had finally been hung up. The spare room in their Dupont Circle apartment was hers for the taking, as well as a latchkey for the back door to keep all her comings and goings unobserved (and unreported to her mother.)

Her aunt had a more bohemian approach to parenting that suited Joan just fine - and her uncle a healthy respect for his niece’s gifts and talents, and the ways they could be of use out in the world. It had been Uncle Jack who had cheered her track meets, come to her senior thesis defense, talked her through a few particularly bad break-ups. _They don’t deserve you, Joanie,_ he’d always say. _You’re not built to settle for average._

Not built to settle, that was her. And every man she met in Washington - and the rest of the world, frankly - was average. (And how could they not be, compared to the men she knew and loved, like Uncle Jack?)

Which was why it was completely unforeseen that one day, out of the blue, she should get a compliment on her form at the shooting range, and feel a sudden flutter in her stomach at the voice of the man who said it, a man whose opinion she respected, whose knowledge on the subject was unquestioned, who was known to mean what he said. _Oh, god in heaven, not now._

Joan had never done anything in her life for the sake of a man, and she did not want to start getting moon-eyed here, on the verge of a war, when so much depended on her clear sight.


	2. Central Casting

She wouldn’t have come back from the PX early if she’d known there was going to be an ambush.

“Oh, make Joan play!” Judy said quickly as Joan came in the door, making her regret nearly every decision she’d made that afternoon.

“Make Joan play what?” she asked, wondering if it was not too late to make a break for the door again and find someplace to hide until lights out was called.

“We’re playing a game,” Eileen offered over the top of her magazine, finishing the crossword while she orchestrated…whatever this was. “Someone’s making a movie about your life - who’s playing your love interest?”

“I already called dibs on Betty Grable,” Bill offered.

“Much as it might amuse the company, I do not think Joan’s love interest would ever be played by Betty Grable, Bill,” Marjorie said flatly from the back of the room and the game of gin rummy currently in progress between her, Johnny, Molly, and Guarnere.

Bill shrugged and gave one of his trademark grins. “Be one hell of a picture if it was.”

Joan rolled her eyes at Bill’s insinuation. “Eileen, as you may or may not have noticed, I don’t have a love interest at the moment.”

“No excuse! We’ll write one into the picture. Sex sells, m’dear.”

Joan pursed her lips and tried another tack, but it seemed there would be no escape. “I hardly ever go to the movies and I never remember anyone’s name afterwards anyway. Pick someone for me.”

“John Wayne,” Molly suggested from the other side of the card game, laying down her cards. “Gin!” There were rumbles around the table and everyone tossed their cards in to begin again.

Eileen made a face. “Ugh, no, he’s too old.”

“James Cagney!” Judy suggested happily from her chair.

This suggestion was met with almost as much revulsion as the first. “Are you mental? James Cagney’s about four feet tall, Joan would run him over.” Eileen fixed her eye on her fellow solider, imagination spinning wildly behind her eyes as she attempted to conjure the kind of man who would hold Saint Joan’s attention. “No, we need someone with…class. Style… Someone with power and a commanding air who looks good in pinks and greens.”

“You’re having far too much fun with this,” Joan said, looking a little worried as the rest of the room tossed out suggestions.

“Tyrone Power.” “Cary Grant.” “David Niven.”

Eileen really did throw something this time - the pencil she’d been using to fill out the crossword. “Judy, you’re barred from giving any more suggestions. David Niv- It’s absurd." 

“He’s in the Commandos!”

Eileen waved her off and narrowed her eyes, concentrating deeply again as she gazed at Joan, and then, suddenly, sat up, eyes electric with inspiration. "No! I have it. Gary Cooper. The jaw, the rugged good looks, the air of command. That’s it. It’s perfect. I love it. Production starts next week. Gowns by Adrian, score by Korngold.”

Joan looked at Marjorie, trying to work out what she would know the actor from. “Sergeant York,” Marjorie supplied, filling in Joan’s blank look.

“Oh! Oh…” For a moment, Joan was in a world entirely her own, contemplating the possibilities posed by such a choice. Eileen smirked and made a triumphant sound, which quickly brought Joan out of the clouds. “And who’s playing yours, Director Hammond?”

“Paul Heinried,” Eileen revealed, sounding very pleased with herself. “Distinguished, foreign, debonair. We meet on my world tour. He’s an eastern European diplomat.”

“I did like him in Casablanca, a good choice,” Marjorie agreed. “Now we just have to work on getting you back to Hollywood in one piece to sell the rights.”


	3. Truth or Dare

“It’s a simple game. We ask you ten questions, and if you don’t want to answer, you drink.”

Joan considered the stakes, the rest of the bunkhouse, and then, to general amazement, sat down and tapped the table as though she were asking to be dealt into a poker game, eyes fixed on Eileen. There were shrieks, and Judy, obviously already a few drinks into her night, laid down another one of the glasses and carefully topped it up with Canadian Club, her hand shaking just a little and sending some of the whisky over the side of the glass.

Eileen took a breath and considered her options, her opponent perched on the edge of her chair, back straight and feet planted as though she were waiting for a congressional hearing to start. “Well, girls, what do we want to know about Saint Joan?”

“How many boyfriends have you had?”

“Steady?" She thought for a moment and counted on her fingers. "Five. Paul, Davis, Arnold, John, and Bennett.”

“What made you join the Army?”

“The chance to prove someone wrong.”

“Have you ever gone all the way with a boy?”

“Yes.” There were titters. “I wasn’t always _Saint_ Joan, you know,” she said with a slim smile, eyes still fixed on Eileen, silently saying _Go on, try me._

Eileen leaned back in her chair, amateur hour over. “Do you find any of the enlisted men here attractive?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Would you date any of them?”

“That depends, the PX isn’t exactly my idea of a fine night out.”

“What is your idea of a fine night out?”

“Drinks at home, dinner at the Tabard, a show at the National, and a walk at midnight along the Mall.”

“And inside for afters, if he’s attractive enough?” Joan made a slight gesture with her hands to indicate yes - more giggles from the gallery. “Careful, girls, that sounds like an officer’s pay,” Eileen said with a glint in her eyes. Joan gave the smallest of shrugs. “Do you find any of the officers here attractive?”

Another pause, the two duelists still studying each other across the table. “Yes.”

Eileen’s grin was sly in the extreme. “Which ones?”

Joan looked at Eileen, took the glass, and swiftly drained it, setting it back on the table and tapping for Judy to fill it again, the line she would not cross now clearly marked in the sand.

“I have two questions left,” Eileen reminded.

“Then I have two drinks,” Joan replied shortly, listening to Judy pour.

“You haven’t heard them yet.”

“I don’t think I need to.”

“That’s fine,” Eileen said, leaning back in her chair and watching Joan pound down another shot. “I think I know your answer, anyway.”

Joan paused, the third shot scarcely in her glass. “Try me.” Eileen smirked, rising from her chair and bending down to put her lips close to Joan’s ear, her hair curtaining down between the two women as she whispered her guess, her voice drowned out by the fan, blowing listlessly in the corner of the bunkhouse, and the cicadas singing outside in the warm Carolina night.

Joan’s face blanched, and she turned, quickly, to look at Eileen. “I just call them like I see them,” the Californian said with a smile. “He seems like your type. It’s cute, really.” Joan looked ready to murder someone - and the way she chased down her final shot meant that whatever name Eileen had given was right. What that was, however, the former model wouldn’t say, no matter how the others pressed her, some strange code of honor keeping her silent.


	4. The Radio - Part 1

The real pride and joy of the PX was the radio.

A gleaming maple monolith, it sat in the corner enjoying light duties during the week, saving its energy for Friday, when the volume would be cranked as high as it would go and the crystals stretched to their limit as the airwaves searched for New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, repeaters across the country bringing the sultry sounds of the Cotton Club, the Hollywood Bowl, the Coconut Grove, and the Pump Room into the Georgia foothills.

The music was of secondary importance to the men, who used it mainly as a backdrop to keep the room from getting soft, but for the girls, it was a godsend - to some more than others, Judy and Doris in particular. But no one - _no one_ \- loved to dance more than Eileen, who had, she informed them one night, actually performed in a floor show at the Coconut Grove once. “Come on, Connie,” she said, one particularly good evening when the energy in the room was high, “Give the chair a rest and dance. I know you want to.”

“I…I can’t.” The shy Wisconsin girl seemed to shrink a little, having been watching Eileen’s considerable skills for the last ten minutes.

“What, everyone can dance, come on.” Eileen pulled the girl out of her seat and grabbed both hands, arranging a two woman chorus line as Kay Kyser began to clap and croon _I’ve got spurs, that jingle, jangle, jingle - jingle jangle, as I go riding merrily along_. “Hear the clapping? That’s the beat. Now move your hands with it, left, right, left right, that’s it, you’ve got it. Now we’re gonna add some feet - just follow mine, left front, right foot, lean a little, and back we go, right front, left foot, lean the other way, good girl! Now take my hand, and we shuffle, shuffle, and the other way.”

And, just like that, they were dancing, Eileen in her element, her movements poised and smooth, the Hollywood dance hostess to her core, Connie’s unsure and tentative, a smile building on her face as she repeated the motions a few times and kept the hang of it.

_And they sing, ‘Oh, ain’t you glad you’re single?’  
And that song ain’t so very far from wrong._

An audience was forming, clapping along with the beat and Kyser’s smiling _Oh Lilibelle, oh, Lilibelle, though I may have done some fooling This is why I never fell,_ the room alive somehow, from Eileen’s smiles and Connie’s joy at having found she could do something new.

“Hey, Eileen,” Leibgott said from the front of the crowd, with his eye to the main chance, as the song finished up and the radio station rolled into a commercial, “can you teach me to dance?”

“Not on your life, Joe,” she shot back, the smiling dancer gone, replaced, once more, with the hard-headed woman who’d decided jumping out of an airplane sounded like a grand idea. “I like my feet where they are.” The whole PX hollered in laughter, and Joe tried not to look too cut up about it, going back to the bar for a beer while his buddies ribbed him a little, and ‘asking for dance lessons’ became shorthand for ‘a thing that won’t be given.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick history notes, because I love vintage radio programs - all the nightclubs listed here would have broadcast their live shows on Friday and Saturday nights, broadcasts that would have been picked up by local stations and rebroadcast. As the war goes on, many of these venues would record special shows for servicemen. Kay Kyser and his Orchestra were an occasional guest at a couple of these venues; in this period he’s perhaps better known for his movie appearances.
> 
> Also, because I feel I should - anyone interested in vintage radio should know that WDCB, a jazz station near Chicago, does vintage programming from 11 am to 4 pm CST on Saturdays. You can access a stream on their website.


	5. The Radio - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt: " X me - “teach me” with Eileen and Joe. Maybe him trying to get dance lessons again?"

It is a heathenish hour when the PX finally closes down for the night, the band leaders in far-away Los Angeles packing away the instruments, the radio broadcasters finally going to bed, and all the tired, drunk dancers of the City of Angels tripping home under the neon. “One last song for the evening,” the announcer will say, and Fats Waller will crackle onto the air.

Closing time - last call was ten minutes ago, and they’re starting to sweep the floors around the crazy kids who are still hanging out, sprawled on chairs, falling asleep in their shoes, the real party animals who just aren’t ready to face Sunday. “Time for bed,” Eileen announces with a yawn, rising to her feet, but she can’t make it to the door without an interception, the man who’s been waiting all evening for this chance making a break for it, and spinning her onto the floor.

She’s danced like a demon all night, the veritable queen of swing, ruling the floor unchallenged, but he’s not asking for the queen - just for Eileen, tired and fading, leaning into his jacket for the only slow song she’s danced to all night, appreciating being soft, being held, her replies murmured for one pair of ears alone. “Joe Liebgott, you’re a dirty liar if you say you need dance lessons.”

And all Joe does is smile, letting Fats tell it like it is.

_Here we are, out of cigarettes,  
Holding hands and yawning; look how late it gets,   
Two sleepy people, by dawn’s early light,   
Too much in love to say good-night._


	6. The Storage Shed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Chapter 10 of DS, I speculated that at least one member of the Girl Gang was getting a little hot and heavy. Speculate no more, folks! (It’s not one of the usual suspects.)
> 
> Adults making consensual decisions below the cut.

At Mackall, as at Toccoa, the lingering threat of having a hundred guys know your business was enough to keep any but the absolutely most dedicated from fooling around. A few men had openly tried their chances, with little success - and those that had been successful had been keeping their accomplishments, and their meeting places, very, very secret.

No one else in the company, for instance, knew about this particular storage shed, or its particular use on Friday nights, except for the two people now in it producing a steady cadence of breathy, panting sounds, building to a close, and then - a stifled cry! - finishing. (Successfully, a candid outside observer might have ventured.)

“Little quick today, were we?” June asked with a smile as her lover negotiated his way out from between her legs, cleaning himself up as she pulled her underwear and pants back on, and went fumbling in her jacket pocket for her lighter and cigarettes. "We’re not paying by the hour or anything.“

"Sorry, just…a little anxious, is all.” Chuck hitched his own trousers back over his hips, leaving his belt undone, and waved away her offer of a cigarette, trying to find some meaning in the beating of his heart. “Still don’t understand how you found this place.”

June snorted. “Try growing up with seven siblings in a two flat in Jersey and see how good you get at finding some privacy.”

“Seven?”

June nodded, and Chuck responded with a nod of his own, adding this to the small list of facts he was building about her life before.

They didn’t usually do much talking, on these…dates of theirs. This relationship was more transactional, two people who had discovered a common interest in acquiring a certain service that the other was in a position to fulfill. Strictly business - a straight in and out kind of affair with very little in the way of foreplay except whatever was necessary to get started. June wasn’t here to be seduced, and she was very up front about that, but what had started as something infinitely casual had begun, at least from Chuck’s end of things, to beckon towards something more. He found himself wanting to linger, to talk, to learn more about her, to hear about her seven siblings and her time in the polio ward and waiting tables and…everything, really.

“Did you want to…again?” he asked, hoping to make her stay. “I brought two.”

“In a minute, maybe,” she mused. “Aren’t you afraid Talbert’s going to start missing some of his condoms?”

Chuck snorted. “No. He’s not taking inventory.” He glanced over at June, staring at the ceiling with her cigarette in hand, perfectly content. She was mighty pretty, like this, just after they’d - but she was mighty pretty plenty of other times, too, and he wanted to tell her so, but never could quite seem to find the words for it. "June, you ever want to…go see a movie sometime, or something?“

"What, you mean, together? In public?”

The way she said it made it sound as though the idea of being seen with him was distasteful, and Chuck suddenly felt very small. “Well, yeah, sure.”

June gave a little sigh, exhaling her smoke. “You know we can’t do that.”

“Do I?”

She looked at him like he was simple. “I don’t know about you all, but Annie Sutton read us the riot act on starting relationships. Says it destroys unit morale.”

Chuck did remember a lecture of some kind, in the far distant days of Basic before the girls had actually joined the company, and Sink had said that there would be no fooling around between any of his soldiers. He’d assumed the girls had gotten the same lecture. “What would Annie Sutton know about it?”

“Girls can like girls, Chuck,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve got a few guys who like guys in this unit, either. And that’s fine - long as they aren’t getting bitchy about who gets to fuck who. That’s why we’re keeping this low.” She smiled at him. “So no one gets hurt.”

Chuck nodded, taking a deep breath and inhaling the smell of her cigarette, the faint smell of perfume in her hair, the earthiness of the shed, and wondered if he was a fool for agreeing to this, or for feeling a little hurt himself.


	7. Brontide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from broadwaybaggins: "Word prompt: brontide (the rumble of distant thunder) with either Billie or Joan from the 1940s girl gang?"

The thunder rolled in with reassuring slowness, a building basso underneath the slow patter of rain on ancient mullioned windows. It would be a bother in a few hours, when it was time to head back to camp and none of them had brought their raincoats- but for now, Connie thought, it was reassuring. Wherever the army sent them, Georgia or North Carolina or England, the rain, at least, was the same.

She missed home. England was pretty, but it was not Wisconsin - the roads were different, and the flowers were different, and even the cows seemed to moo in a different key. But the rain was reassuring - just as the sound of Guarnere telling a joke, or Doris laughing, or Skip Muck grabbing her shoulder as he passed and asking if she wanted another beer, reminded her that she was here with her people, her unit - her friends. And where they were, home was also.

She wasn’t the only one having trouble, it seemed - seated in one of the deep windows, Joan was studying the scene outside the window, the fields on the other side of the road nodding under the rain, her cap tucked into the shoulder-strap of her jacket

“Penny for your thoughts?” Connie asked, glancing behind her to make sure Skip wasn’t coming back yet with that beer.

Joan looked away from the window and smiled apologetically. “I’m not even sure they’re worth that much,” she joked, looking back down at her own half-finished glass and then around the rest of the The Bell, filled with the least rowdy members of the 506th and a few of Aldbourne’s hardier residents, a few of the chaps from the local farms going toe to toe with Luz and Malarkey over a game of darts. “I was just…thinking about…something Marjorie’s friend said earlier. About all this. A month from now and it’ll just be a memory. Warm barrooms, beer, singing - clean clothes. I’m just…wondering if we’re ready. Any of us.”

Connie bit her lip, looking around at the happiness, the warm comfort in the faces of all the people here. Joan was right. There would be no bars like this in France. This wasn’t war - wasn’t even the comparatively mild suffering of boot camp. Her grandfather would have said that they were getting soft. Outside the window, the rain picked up the pace, drumming on the windows, and another thunderclap split the air, nearer this time. In France there would be rain, too, drumming on their helmets the same way it was drumming on the windows. There would be rain - and they would have each other. “We’re ready,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. Joan looked up at her, interested. “We know the soldiers next to us,” Connie said. “That they’ve got our backs - and if something happens, we’d have theirs. That makes us ready.”

Joan smiled, and rose from her seat, patting Connie on the shoulder as she went by. “Thanks, Connie.”

“What was that about?” Skip asked, shuffling back with the beers and watching Joan get roped into the next round of darts, partnering Compton.

“Nothing,” Connie said, taking a glass. _Nothing worth worrying over._ For now there was the pub, and the darts game, and pints of English pale, and tomorrow would worry about itself.


	8. Two Sleepy Kids

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt, For the intimacy post, 14, leaning a head on someone's shoulder, for Irene and Shifty? She's a pretty quiet lady, I want to know more about her.

Dick Winters was surveying the troops.

They were on the longer leg of their train journey north, the car gently rocking back and forth as they rode on through the cool quiet of the Appalachians. Most of the men were sleeping, sprawled over seats and spreading out into aisles, hats tipped over eyes, coats unbuttoned. Here and there a lone figure snored. It pleased him, what he saw as he went from car to car - unafraid of their fellow travelers, they slept as one, puppies in one enormous, drawn-out heap. It was a long way from those first days at Toccoa, when they’d scorned the sight of each other, breaking out into fights over baseball teams.

Birds of a feather would flock together - even if they were all in matching olive drab. It seemed only natural that Easy Company’s Italians should adopt Doris into their group even if she was from Chicago, as she was mouthy and loud and able to give as good as she got. Ruth, too, became part of this crowd, a city girl who could dish her own and wasn’t above throwing the first punch. Webster, the odd college man out in a field of high school educations, mooned a little after Molly, who had both finished her degree and worked in her field, but found a comrade in Billie, who like him scorned the white glove and country club attitude of her parents. 

Lipton, Martin and Marjorie, the oldsters of the group, formed a loose confederation of cool-headed common sense under their sergeants’ stripes. Skip Muck took Connie, a fellow Midwesterner who said what she meant, under his wing, and soon Alex Penkala was her friend, too. Julie earned George Luz’s undying respect when she disassembled a field telephone in the middle of an exercise to remove debris that was causing a poor connection. (She also laughed at George’s jokes, which was a plus in his book.) Town seemed to go with town, country with country. They shared their favorite books, their games, boyfriends and girlfriends, likes and dislikes. Tiny knots of family had formed under a larger banner - everyone in it together, but those precious few somehow beyond, folks for whom you’d go an extra mile or give your last smoke. And those knots would hold this team together.

The army seemed a strange place for quiet dreamers - and for some even stranger reason, Easy Company had two. Irene Henderson had spent her childhood pumping gas in a tiny town in Tennessee and knew the world only from the cars passing by on their way to other places, their discarded newspapers and magazines and maps bridges to a world entirely unlike her own, where buildings were taller than trees and the only things that be described as mountainous were skyscrapers, and music came off of a record player, and not out of the mouths of the people you were with. She was one of the few recruits who’d known poison ivy when they were doing their camouflage exercise, saving more than a couple of the fellows from a nasty case of itching. Separated from Doris, her usual partner, for the exercise, she’d been paired off with Shifty. 

Shifty Powers, who had played high school basketball at home in Virginia and grown up with a gun in his hand, to whom shooting was as natural as breathing but who wore the mantle of the battalion’s best shot with humility. Sobel had thought that his two quiet ones might silence themselves into failure if forced to work together - and he could not have been more wrong. They were natural allies. It was Shifty and Irene whom no one could find in the tall grass, and they might have stayed there all night in silent glee if Sobel hadn’t cursed them out and demanded to know where they were. Shifty was teaching Irene the higher mechanics of good shooting form, and Irene was teaching Shifty how to sing, which he was becoming good at, and, by extension, to talk to girls, which he was not. 

Now they were headed off to war, and down at the end of one car, Shifty’s head was on Irene’s shoulder, looking (except for their uniforms) like two sleepy kids catching the train home, propped together for mutual support. That, at least, made Dick smile, if a little sadly. Two kids. They were all kids. 

Across the aisle, Harry and Joan were playing a quiet and oddly animated game of War, throwing cards on the case they’d propped between them without saying a single word. Harry won the last hand with a flash of exuberation in his hands, and Joan rolled her eyes and silently declined another game, leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. Harry flashed the deck of cards at Dick, who shook his head. Harry shrugged and began dealing a game of solitaire, letting his friend resume the seat across the aisle and close his own eyes.

It would be a long night, and a long day ahead. They would need their sleep. 


	9. The Chase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt, "girl gang member of your choice running away from Ronald Speirs!"

It wasn’t like June to go slamming doors, or come running inside a building to do it, but here they were, in the women’s quarters in Aldbourne, and the Easy Company riflewoman had done just that, leaning against the door as though she fully expected someone to follow her through it, breathing like she’d just tried to beat her best time up Curahee.

“What the hell happened to you?” Doris asked, looking over the red-faced private with concern.

“Nothing, yet, and hopefully nothing ever will,” June managed, looking over her shoulder for what seemed like the fifth time since she’d shut the door.

Marjorie tried to be more direct. “June, are you being chased? Are we being invaded? What is going on?”

June caught her breath a little and collected her thoughts. “I had instructions to deliver some papers to the BEF liason office. Well, I got there, and walked in, and the…the ATS secretary was in the middle of - someone.”

Marjorie’s eyebrows rose, and Doris grinned. “Yeah? Anyone we know?”

“That - that lieutenant from Dog Company? Beat Sobel at Olympics day? Dark hair, always looks like he’s about to murder someone?”

“The one Ruth likes? Speirs?” Marjorie gave a low whistle. “Good for that ATS girl.”

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t really feel like sticking around to see if he really does like murdering people, so I dropped the papers on a chair and high-tailed it out.” June took a deep breath. “And I’m really, really hoping he didn’t follow me.”

“Suit yourself,” Doris said with a grin. “I wouldn’t mind him being in the middle of anything.”


	10. Spin the Bottle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from junojelli - "Spin the bottle kiss, in London after Normandy with the Easy boys and girls 😏"

Colonel Sink had said that his unit would be hard-fighting, but no thought had been given that with that would come hard-partying as well.

They had closed down the pub in Aldbourne, and stumbled home, singing all the old songs they loved in the worst possible way, with voices that strained to hit the notes.

And now, in what was fast threatening to be the dim of the morning, they had made quick work of a whole case of beers someone had stockpiled drinking to absent friends. The table was filled with empty bottles, and it was only a matter of time before one toppled, rotating a few times on its side before coming to rest, accusingly, at Perconte. Everyone stared for a minute at the person who’d bumped the table, and Doris, grinning, leaned over and planted a kiss on Perconte’s swarthy, surprised cheek - and they were all fifteen again, drunk and devilish for the first time.

Perco kissed Julie, who kissed George (who stood up and dipped her as though this were a Rogers and Astaire picture, causing more catcalls), and on it went, until Connie kissed Ruth (a touch on the cheeks, like two French socialites out to lunch) and Ruth set the bottle spinning again.

Somewhere down the passageway, they heard a door slam, someone complaining, loudly and deliberately, as they made their way to the common room, until he appeared in the doorway in nothing but his boots, wrinkled PT shirt and boxer shorts, the picture of agitated fatherhood, roused from sleep by his hooligan teenage children - “Will someone tell me what _the fuck_ is going on in here with all this noise!”

The bottle slowed, the glass whistling faintly on the tabletop, and finally came to a rest pointing straight at the door, and one very angry Joe Toye.

It took a moment for the Irishman to realize what he’d walked into, his expression changing rapidly. “Now, wait, who the hell - I’m not - I didn’t -”

Ruth rose from her chair, to general hooting, tucking her hair behind her ears before stepping up to Toye, grabbing two fistfuls of his PT shirt to plant a very expressive kiss right on his lips that did more than the game required, and for a deal longer, too. Toye, for his part, looked too stunned to do anything other than stand there and take it, though his hands seemed to be moving in the general direction of getting a piece of Ruth’s backside before she pulled away, evidently finished. She whispered something in Polish, smiling broadly before patting him on the chest and pushing past him to go off to her own billet. “What’d she say?” Toye asked, looking around the room in agitated (and one might even say aroused) confusion. “What’d she fucking say?”

“I think she said you’re mighty cute when you’re not complaining,” Liebgott said with a grin. Toye looked after her, retreating into the night, all thoughts of sleep forgotten, possibilities dancing in his eyes.

“Damn right I am.”


	11. Aftershocks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from junojelli: " Accidentally witnessed kiss for Joe Toye and Ruth, my new OTP 😍"

“What the hell happened to you?” Ruth asked Joe, watching as the Brecourt group returned, dumping themselves on the ground, knees muddied and helmets askew. Joe’s jacket was ripped in a dozen places, and he appeared to be carrying a different gun than the one he’d started their mission with.

“Nothing,” Toye mumbled, refusing to meet her eye.

“Yeah, sure, nothing,” Ruth shot back, her eyes still following him with suspicious interest as he began cleaning the new gun, hands shaking just a little as he did so.

“EASY COMPANY, grab your gear, we’re moving OUT,” Joan shouted above the din, waving to get everyone’s attention as the deep-throated hum of a Sherman threatened to drown her out. Nixon rode by, giving her a careless hello from the front of the tank, Winters sitting just beneath him. _Some guys have all the luck_ , she thought to herself, turning to make one last pass through the square sure that every last man or woman had heard the orders. “Easy Company, on me! We’re moving!”

She looked around, and saw a flash of red hair in the shadow of a broken wall- Ruth, deeply involved in a kiss with Toye, obviously telling him in so many words what she thought of whatever it was that had happened at Brecourt. For a moment, there was no war - just the two of them, being scared, but scared together.

In the road behind her, one of the jeeps sounded its horn, waking her back up, and she returned to the road and the task at hand.

“You okay?” Compton asked, falling in with Joan. “You were far away for a minute there.”

Joan shook herself a little and plastered on a smile that probably looked more like a grimace. “I think I’m supposed to be asking you that question, Buck,” she replied, wishing she could ask someone else the same thing, knowing she would get the story, the whole story, later tonight. That just like Ruth, she wouldn’t like hearing it, and unlike Ruth, would be unable to do a damn thing about it.


	12. Jilted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from junojelli - "No. 39, an actual open honest conversation, for George Luz and Julie!"

It had the makings of a sort of lazy afternoon - half the company had gone down to the pub for darts and ale, several had commandeered bicycles and were going to make a nuisance of themselves in the backcountry lanes looking for lardy cakes, and the rest had made some vague suggestion about teaching the local kids how to play baseball, which sounded like a tall order.

The stables which served as one of the Easy Company billets were quiet, and George was just running back to search for a comic book his mother had sent him when he saw Julie, seated at the long wooden table that served as the mess, cleaning her radio set. The whole apparatus was in peices on the table in front of her, and the petite British blonde was going over each and every peice with a chamois, as if she were expecting a Sobel-grade weapons check on the inner workings of the radio - which the man would never do, as he could hardly turn the damn thing on.

“Hey, Julie - got a penny?”

“You’re not Dietrich, George,” Julie said, returning to her vacuum tube couplings with a vengeance.

“Hey - hey.” George sat down on the bench a half-seat away. “What’s eating you? You’re going to take the paint off the thing, the way you’re going." 

Julie sighed, and set down the rag she was using to clean the contacts, taking a deep breath. "I would have thought it’d be kinda nice, for you, being home.”

“Not particularly.”

“You wanna talk about it?” This was a side of George seldom seen - not the prankster, or the clown, but the kind-hearted friend who hid behind the other two like a puppeteer, and only came out when laughter didn’t work.

“Did I ever tell you I was jilted?” Julie asked, suddenly. “Stood up,” she added, when George looked just the smallest bit confused. “Maybe…half a year ago, I was engaged, to be married - nice chap, another clerk from the base where I was stationed with the ATS - and he…he got cold feet, and left me up at the altar. I say left - he never actually showed up. We found out later he’d taken another posting rather than get married - RAF tech or something. Anyway, being…here, being home…it’s…brought some of it back. Being…inadequate, or surplus to requirements, or something. It’s just, sometimes…walking in the village, or, or going to the pub, I just worry…that people know.”

It was, as confessions go, a lot, and, to be fair, George was taking it well in stride. “So, firstly,” he began, choosing his words with care, “that guy’s an asshole, and if we see him here, you point him out to me, because me and Joe are gonna punch his lights out, and Ruth will probably scalp him for ya.” It was an outlandish proposition, just the sort of thing that George would say (and that Joe and Ruth, frankly, would really do) but it served its purpose, for she gave a half-gasped laugh. “And second-” and here he took her hand, “You’re not surplus nothing, and I’d be lost without you - to say nothing about the rest of these losers.”

It was a honest and uncomplicated compliment, the best kind, and it made Julie smile - which had, of course, been the entire point. "So, whaddya say we pack this up, and you come keep score for this baseball game?“

"I don’t know baseball, George.”

“But you can count! And you got pretty handwriting, people will be able to read the scoreboard.”

She laughed, sighed, and began putting the set back together, and George beamed, once more victorious, one more point on the board for Jolly Old Saint Luz.


	13. Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from broadwaybaggins, “ kisses meant to distract the other person from whatever they were intently doing”, whatever couple you like!

Slow days in Aldbourne invited trouble.

It was fine when you had somewhere to go, an errand to run or a trip to take or even something as simple as a bicycle to trundle off down a country lane with, but otherwise, the quiet created a vacuum. And where there were quiet paratroopers, there would almost certainly very shortly be noise.

This was one such afternoon; in the stable that formed the basis of the Easy Company barracks block, a few of the guys were answering mail or reading in the remains of the golden hours of the day, an abandoned poker game providing the building materials for a card castle Popeye was assembling piece by pains-taking piece. Webster was in the corner with a novel, Grant on the end of a table with his cleaning kit and his rifle, the gun in pieces before him. And into this idyllic scene came Irene, Doris, and Molly, just returned from their bicycle trip to Ramsbury, giggling and giddy with sunshine, quickly trying to silence themselves as they realized they’d disturbed the quiet. Everyone returned to their books and card castles, and the three girls exchanged glances, obviously planning some mischief.

Molly handed over her bag to Doris and picked her victim, silently making a lap of the room to throw off the scent. “Hey, honey,” she said, leaning over Grant and putting her hands on his shoulders to press a kiss on the top of his forehead. “Long day at the office?”

The results were instantaneous - Chuck looked up from the disassembled gun like a man possessed, eyes sparkling and alert, and replied, “The fucking longest,” and turned around so quickly he jogged the table and knocked down the card castle. Molly grinned and danced away, her damage done, while Doris and Irene just laughed. “Hey, get back here and let me finish, Mahoney,” Chuck said, now with full intent to chase, “We ain’t done yet.”

No one saw Webster in the corner, looking up from his book with half-hooded eyes, watching the whole exchange with what could only be termed jealous interest, his eyes following Molly and her smiles as Grant chased her around the room.


	14. Tongue-Tied

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt - "I can't talk to cute girls, I don't know how!" with Webster and Liebgott please! ❤️❤️

It was not really a night for serious problems, but here they were - Molly, Julie and June were at the other end of the bar, swapping stories about something, and Webster was hiding behind his beer.

“Just go talk to her, Web!” Liebgott was urging. In his mind, this was quite simple - Molly kept looking at Web and Web kept looking at Molly. “If you don’t get on that, I know the infantry’s coming in soon and someone is going to say they like the look of those jump wings. Or that ass,” he added, for purely practical reasons.

Webster, however, looked to be in physical pain, until finally he spilled out “I…I can’t talk to cute girls, I don’t know how!”

Joe looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or…well, laugh, and it was to his credit that he didn’t actually act on the impulse, because Webster looked pretty miserable for just having admitted that he, David Kenyon Webster, who had bested jump school, half the province of Normandy, and the Harvard entrance exam, could not talk to a girl.

“Well, Web, it ain’t hard. Usually you start with the cute part and go from there.” This didn’t seem to be working, so Liebgott tried a different tack. “Look, you…you both like books. Ask her …ask her what she’s reading. Ask her - ask her her favorite author. Ask her to say somethin’ in one of those dead languages she’s dropping all over the place. I don’t know!”

Webster looked like he’d rather eat a large snake, and Liebgott sighed, studying his beer for moment before turning around in his chair. “Hey, Mol! What’s the ancient Greek for ‘cute’?”

Molly squinted a moment. “Well, an epithet for Aphrodite is 'eustephanus’ which means 'well-crowned’.”

“Fuck, that sounds fancy,” Joe murmured to himself. “Well, Web here thinks you’re well-crowned.”

“You are a terrible wingman,” Webster said, face burning, as Molly smiled, looking at Webster with renewed interest as he dragged himself out of his chair, taking his glass with him to the other end of the bar to see what he could salvage out of his evening, and Joe returned to his beer, pleased with the results of his interference, and pondering what a well-crowned Jewish girl would look like, and if this Aphrodite chick had blonde hair, or brown.


	15. Happy Birthday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from lazymadgirl, "#66 "Go big or go home"? Maybe with George Luz, but you can choose whoever you want."

June knew that George was up to something.

The Easy Company radioman and resident trickster had been…remarkably slow helping her run errands in town. It was almost dark by the time they’d finished finding stamps, and writing paper, and a gift for one of his kid sisters, and a box to ship it home in, and June was beginning to wonder if they would make it home before it got dark outside.

True to prediction, the sun was well over the horizon by the time they returned to the stable barracks, moths and crickets starting to emerge from their hidey-holes - and the barracks itself dark as a tomb.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, fumbling along the wall for the old-fashioned enamel switch for the lights.

“Maybe they left for the pub?” George asked, thoroughly unconvincing. June found the switch and prepared for something truly awful.

What she was not expecting was half the company jumping out of the darkness, tossing handfuls of homemade newsprint confetti and shouting “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” at a volume that could have been heard in Ramsbury.

“Go big or go home, right?” George said with a grin, turning to June as the last of the confetti flickered down in between the rafters, someone had turned on the radio to see if they could get the last of the London big band broadcasts, and she’d recovered some of her sense. “Now, ask us no questions and we’ll tell you no lies, but we got cake, we got some snacks, I think there’s some gifts to open, ‘cause we’re classy and we like you…We worked some things out with the guy at the Bell, some things might have fallen off some trucks, some money may have changed hands…but we’re pretty well stocked, so what’d you want? A beer, a whiskey, a gin? Your bartender is on it.” But when he turned back to June, her mouth was set, her eyes slightly slitted, obviously overwhelmed by…something. “Hey, hey. What’s wrong, sweetcakes?”

June blotted at her eyes. “George, this is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”


	16. You Matter To Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt on Tumblr: "I know the prompt comes from a romantic context, but could you do a platonic one for "You matter to me. More than anyone else." between any of your OCs. Just to get a better sense for the bffs in the girl gang."

Letters from home weren’t always pleasant.

Requests for money, requests for prayers, the notice of fires, of sudden losses - of deaths. Try as they might, no family could keep the wider world out of their news from home. Time marched on - and humans were only human. There had already been one or two Dear John letters, girls who’d decided they’d have better luck with a different fellow, and they’d taken those in stride, curses muttered, ill will wished upon the sender, and their friends, male and female alike, reminding the man that he was a catch, a gem, a hell of a guy.

Back in Aldbourne, after Normandy, the mail was finally catching up with them, and Molly looked up from her own haul (a couple of letters from college friends and co-workers and a package from her parents) after Billie made a sound of disgust and stomped outside, taking whatever it was with her, the sound of crying shortly following.

Glances were exchanged. “Give her a minute,” Ruth said, looking at the address on the package. “It’s from her mother.”

“Her brothers?” someone asked. (Billie had two, both in the navy.) Ruth shrugged.

“I’ll go,” Molly offered, setting aside her letters and heading outside to go find her friend.

Billie was in the Thinking Post, a log set back into the hedge in what served, somewhat, as the garden, an open bit of grass with a few tallish trees and the occasional wildflower. “Everything okay?” Molly asked, hands in her pockets.

“She sent me gloves.” Billie threw the box at the ground, a pair of white visiting gloves emerging from their tissue paper. This sounded pretty par for the course for Billie’s mother, who was very active in a number of social causes and (to hear Billie tell it) gave a wonderful afternoon tea. “None of the things I asked for - none of the things I needed. White _fucking_ gloves.”

As tragedies went, it seemed minor, but Molly had heard enough of Billie’s letters from home to know this was one more straw on an already overladen camel. They had just invaded Fortress Europe - had fought, bled, and, in more than a few instances, _died_ there - and Mrs. Mitchell was harping about gloves. “I’m sorry, Billie.”

She sniffled. “I should be used to it. After two boys she wanted a china doll she could play dress-up with and she got me instead.” She wiped her eyes - she’d obviously done a fair bit of crying over the letter, which was still in her hand. Molly almost didn’t want to read it. “I just…keep fighting this battle with her,” Billie went on. "First it was good girls don’t go to to college, and then it was good girls don’t go to work, and then it was good girls don’t join the army, and now it’s…“ Billie gestured, defeated with the letter, unable to even form the words. "I just can’t win, can I? My own damn mother. It’s like what I want doesn’t matter - like ** _I_** don’t matter.”

“Hey now.” Billie looked up from her letter to see Molly was on her knees on the ground in front of her. “You matter to _me_ ,” she said. “More than anyone else in this _whole_ company. And there’s no one else I’d trust more than you - white gloves or no. And you matter to a whole lot of people in there,” she said, pointing back at the bunkhouse. “And I know that ‘cause I just watched a bunch of 'em getting ready to punch whoever hurt you.” That, at least, made Billie smile. “So let’s sit a minute, and then go call off Perco before he hurts himself,” she offered. Billie nodded, picking up the gloves and closing them back into their box, scooching over on the log so Molly could sit down, too. “You’re a popular lady.,” she said, angling to get her friend to smile. “That Heffron kid looked like he was getting ready to get in, too, and he’s only been here two weeks.” 


	17. An Honest Conversation - Julie + George

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Number 39: an actual open honest conversation, with George Luz and Julie! for Junojelli

It had the makings of a sort of lazy afternoon - half the company had gone down to the pub for darts and ale, several had commandeered bicycles and were going to make a nuisance of themselves in the backcountry lanes looking for lardy cakes, and the rest had made some vague suggestion about teaching the local kids how to play baseball, which sounded like a tall order.

The stables which served as one of the Easy Company billets were quiet, and George was just running back to search for a comic book his mother had sent him when he saw Julie, seated at the long wooden table that served as the mess, cleaning her radio set. The whole apparatus was in peices on the table in front of her, and the petite British blonde was going over each and every peice with a chamois, as if she were expecting a Sobel-grade weapons check on the inner workings of the radio - which the man would never do, as he could hardly turn the damn thing on.

“Hey, Julie - got a penny?”

“You’re not Dietrich, George,” Julie said, returning to her vacuum tube couplings with a vengeance.

“Hey - hey.” George sat down on the bench a half-seat away. “What’s eating you? You’re going to take the paint off the thing, the way you’re going." 

Julie sighed, and set down the rag she was using to clean the contacts, taking a deep breath. "I would have thought it’d be kinda nice, for you, being home.”

“Not particularly.”

“You wanna talk about it?” This was a side of George seldom seen - not the prankster, or the clown, but the kind-hearted friend who hid behind the other two like a puppeteer, and only came out when laughter didn’t work.

“Did I ever tell you I was jilted?” Julie asked, suddenly. “Stood up,” she added, when George looked just the smallest bit confused. “Maybe…half a year ago, I was engaged, to be married - nice chap, another clerk from the base where I was stationed with the ATS - and he…he got cold feet, and left me up at the altar. I say left - he never actually showed up. We found out later he’d taken another posting rather than get married - RAF tech or something. Anyway, being…here, being home…it’s…brought some of it back. Being…inadequate, or surplus to requirements, or something. It’s just, sometimes…walking in the village, or, or going to the pub, I just worry…that people know.”

It was, as confessions go, a lot, and, to be fair, George was taking it well in stride. “So, firstly,” he began, choosing his words with care, “that guy’s an asshole, and if we see him here, you point him out to me, because me and Joe are gonna punch his lights out, and Ruth will probably scalp him for ya.” It was an outlandish proposition, just the sort of thing that George would say (and that Joe and Ruth, frankly, would really do) but it served its purpose, for she gave a half-gasped laugh. “And second-” and here he took her hand, “You’re not surplus nothing, and I’d be lost without you - to say nothing about the rest of these losers.”

It was a honest and uncomplicated compliment, the best kind, and it made Julie smile - which had, of course, been the entire point. "So, whaddya say we pack this up, and you come keep score for this baseball game?“

"I don’t know baseball, George.”

“But you can count! And you got pretty handwriting, people will be able to read the scoreboard.”

She laughed, sighed, and began putting the set back together, and George beamed, once more victorious, one more point on the board for Jolly Old Saint Luz.


	18. Eyes - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For @jamie506101 - eyes for Dick and Joan?

Her eyes make him think of caves and other secret places.

As a boy, he loved playing in the woods, exploring the cool dark of old mine shafts and pit heads, underground places with hidden pools and dripping water. And her eyes remind him of those things, undisturbed, waiting for the careful explorer to release their secrets. 

He can’t help staring, sometimes, in the officer’s mess on the Samaria, as he watches her writing letters, or playing cards with Buck and Harry, or quizzing someone on a technical manual. It’s an indulgence that he allows himself when he knows he’s unobserved by the rest of the room. But sometimes she’ll laugh, and he can’t help himself - he has to see her face. Sometimes her eyes are quick, and dancing, like the disturbed surface of a pond, and sometimes still and solemn- but always somewhat guarded. She listens and counsels everyone, about the ways of girlfriends and wives and mothers, but she has plenty of her own secrets that only she knows.

She, too, is cool and dark, and if it were a different time, a different place, he wishes he had the courage to explore her.

—

His eyes are the same shade as heaven.

She’s tried not to make a study of them - she knows she shouldn’t - but it’s impossible not to watch him and not see. His face is too honest, and like the sky, his eyes can hide nothing. They’re stormy when he’s angry, clouded when he’s struggling to maintain his calm, and as bright and beautiful as summer when he’s relaxed, which isn’t often. But put him with his friends, where he has no commands to give and no orders to obey, and it’s like the sun has come out just to show off that blue. She often wonders what they’re like at night - do the stars come out and twinkle in them? Do they soften under the gauzy light of a full moon?

She’d fly up into them, if she could - but there’s no parachute for a jump like that, and who’s to say if, like Icarus, the sky won’t cast her back down?

—

They think they’re being clever, watching each other across the room. But everyone else has eyes, too. It’s ten days from New York to Liverpool, and by the end of the trip, everyone else is placing bets for how long it’ll take one or the other to crack and say something. One of the Idle guys loses big thinking it’ll be before they get to England, but Nixon scoffs and puts his money on a week after the war ends, if they’re both still standing. Neither of them are hasty people, and who knows? They could be here a while.


	19. What They Need to Hear - Dick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @wecomrades posted a rather interesting bunch of Band of Brothers prompts here on her blog, and I decided, just for fun, to take one and run with it.
> 
> Here’s C: Dick Winters + “I knew it” + cup of tea

The Barnes house was not big enough for such large footsteps - a veritable stampede of elephants, coming up the stairs. But what emerged was not, in fact, elephants, or anything vaguely resembling the same - just Nixon, followed closely by Harry and Buck.

“I knew it! I knew he’d be here - didn’t I tell you all he’d be here!” He came around the room with wild energy, nearly swamping Dick’s somewhat rickety desk. “C'mon, Tiger, it’s Friday. Night off! Start of the weekend. Now, where’s your coat, we’re going to the Hart and Crown.”

“No, you…you go,” Dick said, staring at his borrowed typewriter, his pad of paper, his cooling cup of tea. This small room under the eaves was the best place for an ersatz office, despite the two flights of stairs. For the last several hours he’d been keeping company with the dust and boxes of old clothes, the typewriter perched on an old console table barely wide enough for the thing, his chair part of an old dining room set. And for all the silence, he was still no closer to finishing his task then when he’d started. Mrs. Barnes had already come and been twice, swapping the half-finished cup for a fresh one, her face sympathetic.

“Come on,” Lewis asked, more than a little annoyed at his friend for delaying the start of his evening out. “What could you possibly be working on that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“Letters home,” Dick said, tonelessly.

All the air seemed to leave Lewis’ balloon, and the room suddenly seemed smaller. “Oh.”

Dick nodded. “I’ve got…” he counted the names on the list. “Twelve of these. Including Meehan’s mother.” He took a deep breath. “And I don’t know what to say.”

Everyone seemed at a loss for words, each, in his own way, wondering what their girlfriends and parents would take comfort with if they, one day, did not return. “Tell ‘em what they need to hear,” Harry said, finally. “That their sons died as heroes. That they’ll be missed.”

Dick nodded, and the three other men took their leave, going quieter than they had come. Dick looked at the tea and drank some, the tannins sharp in his throat, posing his fingers carefully on the keys, and taking a breath. 

Heroes. Missed. What they need to hear.

_Dear Mrs. Meehan…_


	20. Kunstkammer - Joan and Speirs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from @wecomrades list on Tumblr - 1. Ronald Speirs + “What the hell am I looking at?” + rainy day

It was the kind of house the Austrians called a _schloss_ , a large country estate whose possession inferred a certain kind of gravitas and dignity to the resident family. Someone with a great deal of money had lived here until very recently - the grounds were well maintained, the hedges clipped and the flowerbeds carefully edged. It was a heady change from many of the places they’d been in Germany, where the houses were in ruins, the walls were tumbling down, and any pretense to a garden was absolutely gone.

One really required a Mercedes, or a Rolls Royce, to roll up to the front door of a house like this, possibly even a dinner jacket and patent leather shoes, or a fur stole - but sadly, the two Easy Company lieutenants pulled up to the stone steps in the standard olive-drab Willys with rain absolutely pouring off the canvas cover, still in their ponchos and uniform fatigues - though Speirs was now sporting a signet ring he’d taken from Hitler’s dressing table, his one touch of class.

The private at the door made his salute, miserable in the rain, the sudden movement sending a shower of water off his jacket.

His sergeant, a small bulldog of a man who looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week, met them in the hall like some strange displaced butler, shoes squeaking on the black and white checked marble floor.

“I’m sorry, sir, we…we didn’t know who else to call.” He lead them through the house, drawing room after drawing room, the whole place strangely…intact, as though they might find a smoking cigarette in an ashtray somewhere, or a half-finished sandwich waiting on a plate. (Not that this was really a sandwich type of a place, but still.) There were flowers in the vases, paintings on the walls, good furniture waiting for use. Outside, the rain drummed on the windows.

Finally, they reached their destination, a second soldier standing guard here, too. The sergeant threw open the door, and Speirs stared. “What…am I looking at?”

The room was piled, floor to ceiling, with crates.

Joan walked up to one to pull it open, revealing a series of paintings, still in their gilt frames, boxed according to size, a Dutch genre painting sitting cheek by jowl with something that might have been a French Impressionist landscape. Another crate revealed a small statue, hastily boxed, Diana the huntress with her dog.

And the whole room was filled with boxes.

“ _Kunstkammer,_ ” she said quietly, staring at the sheer scale of the space. Speirs and the sergeant stared, the German strange on Joan’s tongue. She stared for a moment at the Diana, and then, carefully, pushed the side of the crate back into place. “Radio back to Easy and tell them to get Private Mahoney up here, she’s got museum experience. Then get in a phone call to Regiment. We’re going to need an MFAA man out here.”

“Kunstkammer?” Speirs repeated, still confused.

“It’s art,” Joan said, flatly. “It’s lots of stolen art.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A kunstkammer is a cabinet of curiosities, a literal room in the houses of rich men that might be filled with rare and interesting things he could use to impress his guests. They’re said to be the predecessor to the modern natural history museum, though they might also contain art objects as well. Joan uses the word here to imply a large collection of things collected only for their value, not because they had a theme, or were loved by the collector.
> 
> Which means we are sure as hell not leaving Speirs alone with it for one moment.
> 
> The MFAA is the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives division of the Army. Joan’s asking them to call the Monuments Men - who at this exact moment are probably dealing with the mine at Altaussee, fifty miles away from Berchtesgaden.


	21. Guidon - Molly + Lipton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @wecomrades posted a rather interesting bunch of Band of Brothers prompts here on her blog, and a couple of people have asked me for some of them!
> 
> #17, Carwood Lipton + “That’s a very long list” + head in the clouds

Afternoons in Austria were quiet. 

In the morning, there was drill and PT, or a current events lecture, or, if some visiting dignitary were driving through, some kind of a parade.

They were getting mighty sick of parades.

But after noon, their time was mainly their own. There were plenty of jeeps, and plenty of gas for them, handy for a little bit of sightseeing. The Austrians were pretty cagey people, on the whole (and why should’t they be? They’d been hoodwinked, too, just like half of Europe) but a man could drive for a while and find a beer, or a girl, or a pleasant combination of the two, most of the locals grudgingly pleased with the income that came from serving the Americans.

Sadly, the same privileges did not extend to Easy Company lieutenants, and Lipton’s afternoons were usually spoken for - battalion would have its reports on unit strength and current supplies and whatever the hell else the army would need to know. After his work was done, he’d crawl out from under his typewriter and his paperwork and find the rest of the men gone, off on their daily gallivants.

The building where most of the company was staying had once been the local guildhall, an ancient, timber-framed building brought grudgingly into the modern era. Offices upstairs had been stripped and filled with cots, and the large, open room that had once been the meeting hall was filled with benches and tables, and served as a day room and company mess. It was a pleasant enough space, with slim, old-fashioned leaded windows that looked out over the town square. The tables were big and old, heavy dark wood that could take a licking and keep on ticking, just the sort of place to spread out whatever project you were working on, if you thought no one would bother you while you did it.

This afternoon, for instance, someone had what looked like a very large handkerchief spread out on the table, a box of pencils, a ruler, and some sewing accouterments close by. A strangely domestic scene, one that put Lipton in mind of dining room tables half a world away.

“Hey, Lip,” Molly said, returning from the kitchen with a cup of coffee as the lieutenant came in for a closer look. “How’s tricks?”

Lipton shrugged. “What’s going on here?” he asked, gesturing to the square of cloth.

Molly looked at her work in progress and smiled. “I was out shopping the other day and found an embroidery frame, and thought - well, we’ve got our Easy Company guidon; I might recreate it, except with embroidery, instead of the streamers, and have everyone sign it, before we go home. As a…a souvenir, you might say.”

She had already done the work of sketching 506 PIR E CO along the middle of the flag in block capitals, a paper close to hand with a few examples of ‘CURRAHEE’ in various scripts, along with a list of their battle honors. Lipton considered the paper and the litany of names, the towns and fields in which the regiment had seen action or stayed - C _arentan, Zon, Vechel, Eindhoven, Opheusden, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Driel, Zetten, Mourmelon, Bastogne, Foy, Noville, Berchtesgaden, Zell Am See_. 

“That’s one hell of a long list, Mol.”

How long would it take Molly to embroider them all, all these places they had been, had fought - had died? How many men would sign the flag - and how many men would not? On paper, it all looked deceptively easy - and he knew all too well that it had not been.

Molly looked at her drawing and sighed. “Looking at it, I can hardly believe we did all that myself. And I was there, right?” She took another sip of her coffee. “But someone’s going to want to remember. So I guess it had better be me.”

“Let me know when it’s ready,” Lipton said. “I’ll be the first one to sign it.”


	22. Writing A Letter - Buck + Dick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from junojelli: I've got Buck and Frankie feels now. Imagine Frankie receiving letter from Buck that has had to be hilariously redacted by our favourite Captain Winters.

_He_ handed the envelope back to Buck while barely meeting his eye. “It was in with the enlisted men’s,” he said, his voice low, that vaguely surly voice that suggested he knew he was in the wrong and didn’t like it.

Buck looked at the address. “You didn’t. YOU DID.”

“It was in with the others,” Dick repeated doggedly. “And I’m giving it back.”

Buck looked like he was considering punching his friend in the face, and then thought the better of it, his face breaking out in a grin as he realized how red his face really was. “Find anything you liked?” he said, laughing as Dick turned on his heel, face still burning, trying not to dwell too long on the intimacies he shouldn’t have been privy to.

He’d already spent more time then he wanted to admit pondering the letter (after taking a long walk and a very cold shower) and the vague suggestions contained therein -

_If you have a moment in your little cot, spare a thought for a lonely paratrooper. If I were there, of course, you know where my hands would be, and what they’d be doing. (You’d be making those little noises I like so much, trying to be quiet so we don’t wake half the camp.) Probably still have all our clothes on - you’re on call. Have you changed your perfume? Put a little on your next letter so I can carry it with me. I can smell it behind your ears, taste it on your wrists._

Later that day, Buck was waiting at the girls’ billet for Marjorie when a runner came by, looking perplexed. “Anyone know where Lieutenant Winters is? Got a message for him.”

“Probably writing a letter,” Buck replied, making a joke of it. The response from the girls was immediate and absurd - Ruth spit out her coffee, the card game and its audience burst out laughing, and Irene, balancing on one leg of her chair, fell over backwards. “What? What did I say?”

“He’s not here,” Marjorie told the runner, sending him back on his way, finishing with her boots and collecting her hat. She patted Buck on the shoulder, looking highly amused herself. “Congratulations, Buck - you’ve just learned one of the paragal euphemisms for having sex.”

Now it was Buck’s turn to laugh. “Oh, have I got a story for you.”


	23. A Cavalry Punch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the Inaugural Thirsty Thursday post - a cavalry punch.

“Nix,“ Dick said, eyeing the table of bottles and the waiting punch bowl, and feeling he was somehow going to regret this. "What is this?”

“Army Punch!” Nixon said proudly. “We’re going to have a Toast.”

“Punch is usually lemons, brandy, and tea, Lew,” Harry supplied. “Mostly brandy. My aunt makes it at Christmas-time – stuff will knock you on your ass. This is - ” he surveyed the table, “-none of those things.”

“Ahh, but that is your garden variety punch, and this is an Army Punch - specific to the unit for which it is made, and specifically for the purpose of making the unit toast! Now, gather round, you heathens, there’s an art to this.”

He waited until they were all listening, and, with all the panache of a practiced showman, began. “This unit was first fielded in 1942, in Georgia, and it was there that several hundred men transformed themselves into paratroopers. In honor of the Peach State, we begin our punch with peach schnapps.” He selected a bottle - one of the many on the table - and passed it to Harry. “Light Horse, please.”

Harry shrugged and tipped it into the bowl, letting the entire bottle slowly chug out.

“Tested and tried by field exercises and under-strength commanders, we were sent to England to wait for orders, and gather our courage. To commemorate the good times had at the Blue Boar, and the strength of our English allies, a London Gin. Ron, if you would.” In went a bottle of Gordon’s, the mixture bubbling up promisingly.

“On June the sixth, we jumped into France, and the war. For the hedges, fields and orchards of Normandy, in which so many of our brothers and sisters fought and died - calvados, a strong drink for strong soldiers.” Lewis poured this one, an unmarked bottle that had probably been smuggled out of France in a pack that wasn’t his.

“Trusted and ready, we undertook our second jump as liberators and friends of the Dutch, ready to free them from the Nazi yoke. For the dikes and bridges of Holland, Genever, the national liquor, distilled from junipers. Lip? ” Lipton took the bottle, a tall strange thing with an antique looking label that smelled strongly of forests, and in it went.

“We then went to the Ardennes, remaining on the line in conditions that would have terrified lesser men. For the Bois Jacques, and the bitter cold, we add ice. Frosty, if you could do the honors? ” Dick put a few heaping shovelfuls from the ice bucket into the bowl, which Lew stirred experimentally with the ladle before continuing.

“Our accomplishments are long, but our final objective is here at hand - and so, finally, for Germany, and to complete our Punch, we add Asbach Uralt, the famous brandywine of Unterberg. And with that - ”

“It’s not done,” Joan interrupted, shaking her head. Heads turned as she went to the sideboard, and came back with another bottle, unwiring the top of the champagne and easing the cork off the bottle with surprising flair, the bottle only foaming a little. “Before we serve it and raise our glasses in toast, we here add champagne, for the sweetness of victory - and to the health of the unit’s officers and men.” She raised the bottle, looked around the room and emptied it, meeting Lewis’ eye with a smile. “This is not my first Punch. If you’re going to do it, do it right.”

Lewis, surprised, gestured to the bowl indicating that she was free to take over if she so desired, which she did, taking the ladle and stirring carefully. “As we mix this,” she said, with all the solemnity of an ancient priestess, “we remember the actions and battles that have made us who we are, and as we drink it, we remember the names of the men who are no longer with us to partake. We say their names now, in silence, and drink in their memory.”

She paused, and bowed her head as if at prayer, and around the table the others did the same, going over the silent litany of the dead. 

Prayers and invocations complete, Joan ladled out a cup, the liquid now dark and vicious-looking, and offered it, not to Lewis, but to Dick. “Senior-most officer drinks first – no exceptions.”

Dick eyed the punch glass dubiously, and raised it to his lips, watching Joan over the rim of the glass as he took one long sip - and almost immediately sputtered. “God, that’s strong.”

“As it should be,” Joan said with a smile. “Gentleman, your glasses, please.” They lined up and let her fill each one, each one looking at the mixture with a mix of excitement and fear.

“This is going to make your Aunt’s punch look like a cakewalk,” Buck murmured with a grin, but Harry only raised his eyebrows and indicated that Joan could fill his glass up just a little more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tradition here is actually more in line with a Cavalry Punch, although it’s also sometimes called Grog instead. I have drunk something similar to the mixture described here - and yes, it will knock you on your butt.
> 
> The names given here are from the officer’s Drinking Club, whose sign is still prominently displayed in the Blue Boar pub to this day.


	24. Reckless Driving - Speirs + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junojelli: Ok I'm going to be very naughty and ask for 72, fixing your hair, from the prompt list for Joan and....a certain Ronald Speirs!.

Ron Speirs drove exactly the same way he lived life and waged war - wildly, recklessly, and with complete disregard for the rules.

“I am never letting you drive again,” Joan declared, after one particularly hair-raising joyride from the company CP up to Battalion for their daily briefing, trying to settle her hair into some kind of order after Ron put the Jeep into park.

“Oh, you know you like it,” Ron replied, running a hand through his own hair with casual grace and adjusting his sunglasses, stepping around to her side of the vehicle, waiting for her to collect her bag from the back. “Hey, Duchess, hold - hold up a minute, you’ve still got hair in your face." He chuckled and brushed it away from her eyes, looking over her shoulder for a moment and holding back an even bigger grin.

"And whose fault is that?” Joan wanted to know. “Why - what are you looking at?” She turned around, wondering what the hell was going on over her shoulder that would make him so amused.

“Oh, just Major Winters,” Ron said, more casual than he had a right to be. “For a minute there he looked ready to murder someone.” He smirked. “I think he’d rather it was him down here fixing your hair instead of me.”

“Ron, you take that back right now,” Joan hissed, following him as he took the steps two at a time, almost whistling as he went.

“Absolutely not,” came the flippant reply. “Major, doesn’t the Lieutenant look lovely this morning?”


	25. Awake All Night - Nixon + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: #97: “I apologise sincerely if my handsome/beautiful face has kept you awake all night.” with Nixon, please. It seems like this would be fun to write. Thank you!

It was not an hour for sane people.

Lewis shuffled into the officer’s wardroom, and, seeing Joan at the table with her pen and letters and a cup of cold coffee, squinted at the clock. “Is it that late, or am I really up that early?”

“Late,” Joan confirmed. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Well, if it was my handsome face that’s been keeping you awake all night, I apologize sincerely,” Lew said, investigating the tins on the counter until he found one that still contained cookies, pulling out two and shoving the lid back on. He shuffled over to where Joan was sitting, pulled out a chair, and offered her one - she declined. “And if it was, I know of several _excellent_ ways to solve that problem.” He raised his eyebrows and took a bit of cookie, chewing in a way that could only be described as ‘salacious’, a few crumbs falling on his rumpled shirt and bathrobe.

“Let me guess,” Joan said with a muted smile, capping her pen. “Several of them involve your bed.”

“Oh, no, actually, most of them involve _your_ bed,” Lewis replied, “since you haven’t got a roommate. Although if you don’t mind terrifying Dick…”

This was the game they’d been playing - he suggesting increasingly ridiculous liaisons, and she quietly turning him down. He knew she wouldn’t say yes, for reasons too numerous to name, and she knew (or liked to think she knew) that he wasn’t serious at all - but it was nice to flirt, and be flirted with in turn. “Lewis, one day a woman is going to take you seriously when you say those things.”

“That’s the dream,” he said with a grin, taking another bite of his cookie.

“And Mrs. Lewis Nixon, nee Page, of New York? Where does she factor into all of these dreams?”

Lewis’s face fell, and he finished chewing, swallowing with a look that suggested he’d just bitten into a bug. “Don’t tell me you met her on your whistle stop tour of the East Coast.” She shook her head no, and Lewis considered the remains of his cookie, his appetite apparently gone. “Katherine was… hell, who knows. An opportunity? A mistake? I was going off to war, and we’d been seeing each other for a while, and…thought we should regularize the thing.”

“We’ve all done things we regret, Lew.”

Lewis raised his eyebrows, doubtful, and considered her across the table - the quiet, understanding smile. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to sleep with me? I’ve been told I’m great in the sack and you look like you could use it.”

Joan snorted. “But then who would you trade innuendos with to scandalize Dick?” She gathered up her things, dumping her coffee down the sink and leaving the mug with the rest of the dirty dishes. “Finish your cookie and go back to bed. We’ve got a lecture in the morning.”

“Yes, mom,” Nixon said brattily, solely to make Joan smile. She rolled her eyes, leaving him in the empty wardroom with a half-finished cookie, his mind already circulating around ways to make a joke, in the morning, about the whole episode, probably involving someone else in the role of ‘Dad’.


	26. You Offering? - Talbert + Ruth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @fericita-s "You didn’t tell me your friend was cute! Now what am I going to do?”

It was only their first day back, and they were already swapping war stories.

“So I looked him over, and then I turned to Maria and said ‘You didn’t tell me he’d be cute! Now what am I supposed to do?’” Ruth smirked and took a draw from her cigarette - a new habit, it seemed, that she’d acquired over the Christmas leave, though she’d given no indication what her mother seemed to think of this (or, indeed, whether her mother had at last been told what it was her baby girl was up to.)

“And?” June was hanging on her every word. “What did you do?”

The redhead shrugged, still smiling. “Let him write me a letter after the party in his car.”

“Aaaaaand,” June said again, practically dying for the dirty details.

Ruth paused and thought for a moment, openly enjoying the anticipation, and then fluttered her hand, unimpressed. “Infantry guys - no stamina.”

“Who’s got no stamina?” Grant asked, coming in the barracks door and throwing his duffle back on the bed.

“This sad excuse for a soldier Ruth shacked up with on leave,” June explained, letting Ruth preen for a moment in the spotlight.

“Ruth, Ruth, Ruth,” Talbert said, putting his hands around her shoulders as though she were a boxer preparing to go back into the ring, “what do we keep telling you? As long as he’s a paratrooper…”

“You offering, Floyd?” Ruth shot back, looking up at Talbert with a daredevil grin. June and Chuck exchanged a glance and laughed, the look on Floyd’s face too surprised and delighted not to be ignored.


	27. Upon Her Head a Crown - Dick + Joan + Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cartier Valkyrie tiara came across my dash this morning, and since I love me a mythology reference - and I love me a good tiara - this happened!

“You’re wearing it wrong, Harry, it’s tipped too far back.” Joan appeared in the doorway, watching the proceedings with a bemused look on her face. “Here, you - clearly none of your mothers owned a tiara.”

“What, and yours - never mind, why am I even asking.”

They had found a dragon’s hoard.

There were all sorts of things hidden in the Austrian mountains - down the road at Altausee, a salt mine contained what seemed to be half the museum treasures of Europe, including the ceremonial regalia of the Hapsburg Kings, and the remains of Frederick the Great of Prussia - a whole empire, boxed and ready to be shipped.

This, however, had been slightly smaller, and found right here in the Eagle’s Nest, hidden behind a wall, and, if the truth were told, a great deal more shiny - what looked to be a great deal of the former Miss Braun’s good jewelry, including one outrageous diamond tiara that Joan, with a woman’s eye for these things, pronounced to have been made by Cartier. 

The same tiara that was now sitting on Harry Welsh’s curly-haired, un-aristocratic, Irish American head.

“No,” Joan said, adjusting the circlet on the top of Harry’s head so the wings pointed up, the diamonds flashing in the sunlight from the large picture windows. “My mother did _not_ own a tiara - but she wanted to. She did, however, have several very handsome brooches she could wear in her hair if she wanted, and there was one very nice diamond necklace for state occasions with my grandfather. Made of Wyoming gold, of course - though the diamonds were from Colorado. Very patriotic. There, you’ll do.” She stepped back and admired her work. “Needs a necklace - or a bracelet. No earrings, it would ruin the effect.”

“Where the hell do you wear one of those?” Ron asked, as Harry walked, very carefully, over to a mirror so he could observe the effect.

“The opera, Ron, don’t be an uncultured swine.”

“Well, forgive me for living, Miss Society Pages, we don’t much go for that out in my part of Boston,” Ron huffed.

“Here, you try it on,” Harry said. “Probably look better with your cheekbones than it does with mine.”

Joan rolled her eyes, but gently took the circlet from Harry’s hands, fluffing her hair a little and setting it atop her head, making a few minute adjustments in the mirror.

“Here, Dick, what do you think of Valkyrie here?” Ron asked.

Dick, passing through with his mind on his paperwork, turned and stopped as Joan turned away from the mirror, the tiara with its glittering wings perched perfectly atop her head, her hand catching up the rest of her hair to give the effect of an updo. A cloud moved, and sunlight streamed through the windows, and for one, brief, shining moment, she wasn’t a woman in a t-shirt and a fancy headdress, but a goddess, crowned with light and stars, about to ask for some terrible quest to be undertaken.

And for that moment, Dick seemed to have no words, momentarily taken aback, his usually guarded face slack, lips ever so slightly parted, sharing one very long look with Joan. No one spoke. “Very striking,“ he said, finally, when the cloud had finally moved and his powers of speech had returned to him. "I hope we’ve logged that, I’m sure the MFAA folks will want to do something with it.”

“Of course,” Joan replied, the sunlight and the moment gone, letting her hair back down and carefully removing the circlet from her head. “Here, Harry, where’s the case?”

“Think we all know what Dick’s going to be dreaming about today,” Ron remarked quietly to Harry, as Joan busied herself packing the jewelry away. Harry only snorted.


	28. Room for One More - Dick + Joan

“Room for one more?” He slides into the foxhole, blanket around him like a cloak, and she budges over a bit to let him sit down on this frozen bit of treeroot that does very nicely for a seat. “Like what you’ve done with the place.”

“Thanks,” she says dryly, matching his tone. “Good Housekeeping’s coming next week.”

He chuckles at that, his laughter the warmest thing she’s heard all day. “You look cold,” he says, and gestures her in closer, wrapping his arms and his blanket around her. She pillows into his shoulder, one hand pressed to his chest, trying to reassure him. They’re all scared, of the eighty-eights and the thinness of the line, but also of the creeping dark, the cold that can steal your breath as easily as a bullet can. That’s not the kind of death anyone wants, to be frozen out in the middle of a forest, unseen and unheard. His chin smells of shaving soap, because even out here, in the middle of a forest, in the middle of winter, he has made time to shave.

If this were a different time or a different place she might move his hand so he could palm her breast and she’d whisper dirty nothings in his ear, but it’s too cold even for that, and besides, someone might come looking for them. But for now, its the nearness of him that matters most, and she kisses a corner of that freshly shaved chin to thank him.

Joan woke with a start, taking a deep breath of the bitter air. A light snow was falling - and her foxhole was empty. She sighed and stamped her feet. Damn dreams again. If she was awake that meant she’d slept -and any sleep meant that she’d have energy for another round of checks.

Some women dream about things they don’t have. (Marj has been dreaming about a steak dinner for weeks.) But things they _can’t_ have? What about that?

“Lieutenant Warren? That you?” His voice was still the warmest thing she’d heard all day, though he sounded tired. _Does he ever sleep?_

“Yes, sir.” She rubbed her mittens together, trying to remember what her fingers felt like as she climbed out of her foxhole and brushed some dirt from the seat of her pants. “Just going to check on my people.” _No food, no extra socks, no extra blankets - the only thing I can do for them is remind them I still care._

“Good.” He nodded, face pale with cold. She returned his nod and went on her way, half-way to her first stop when she realized he’d been doing the same thing - checking in on her. The only thing he can do to show he cares.

_Joanie, get your head back on. You’re reading too much in._


	29. Summer Service - Joan, Pacific AU

The woman on the tarmac in summer service khakis was a tall drink of water, and the Marines on their way back stateside wanted to make sure she knew it. It was June in Hawaii, it was hot - and so was she. 

“Hey, baby. You new in town?” “We’ll take care of you while your boyfriend’s at home.” “Yeah, your Army office jockey’s got nothing on the Marines. We’ll show you a good time - show you how we raise flags around here.”

The woman turned her head, the bright blue of the parachute infantry badge on her cap flashing in the sun, and tipped up her aviators. “Mighty nice of you boys to offer,” she said with a knowledgeable smile. “But I’ll have to take a pass.”

A very starchy looking sergeant came running out of the command hut, snapping a salute for the woman. “Captain Warren, we’re waiting for you just this way.” She returned his salute and followed, nodding to the Marines so they could see the double bars on her collar, her smile widening as they realized that she outranked them.

“Oooh, a lady captain!” “Need any of us to salute ya, Captain?”

“The boyfriend’s a major,” she added as she passed, winking and slipping her glasses back on. “He salutes me just fine - and they didn’t give him the oak leaves for nothing.”


	30. Welsh - Warren - Winters - Dick + Joan + Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Me: One of these days my hand and my mind are going to slip, I am going to type 'joan winters' and it is just going to stay there, unnoticed, until I publish the damn thing.

No one should have allowed this.

It’s bad enough when a unit’s got more than one John Smith on the roster, but three lieutenants with last names that start with W is almost worse, and there are days when Major Strayer sputters through “Welsh-Warren-Winters-WHOMEVER” before going off to find a glass of something strong and bemoan the army planner that sent him these three.

Someone announces for Harry Warren at mail call one day, and Harry, quick as you like, takes the letter and tells Joan that their mother says hello, and she should write more often, and everyone has a good laugh.

But when “Letter for Joan Winters?” gets called into officers’ quarters, everyone stares - and that includes Dick and Joan, who both look incredibly flustered - until Nixon, who never likes to miss a joke, plucks the letter from the poor mail clerk’s hand and beams.

“Well, when did that happen, kids? Forget to invite the rest of us? Joanie, at least tell us the ring looks nice.”

Joan looks ready to explode and Dick ready to catch on fire, and neither one of them look at each other for the rest of the afternoon.

(A letter for Joan Welsh shows up the next week and Harry declares that this marriage is a sham, he wants a divorce, and he’s taking the house AND the children. Joan says he’s welcome to them, and Dick follows the exchange with quietly interested eyes, almost looking like he’s ready to get out of his seat and defend her honor, which is silly, since the whole thing’s a joke - right?)


	31. Flee - June, Marjorie, Doris, Speirs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: From the generator, girl gang member of your choice running away from Ronald Speirs!

It wasn’t like June to go slamming doors, or come running inside a building to do it, but here they were, in the women’s quarters in Aldbourne, and the Easy Company riflewoman had done just that, leaning against the door as though she fully expected someone to follow her through it, breathing like she’d just tried to beat her best time up Curahee.

“What the hell happened to you?” Doris asked, looking over the red-faced private with concern.

“Nothing, yet, and hopefully nothing ever will,” June managed, looking over her shoulder for what seemed like the fifth time since she’d shut the door.

Marjorie tried to be more direct. “June, are you being chased? Are we being invaded? What is going on?”

June caught her breath a little and collected her thoughts. “I had instructions to deliver some papers to the BEF liason office. Well, I got there, and walked in, and the…the ATS secretary was in the middle of - someone.”

Marjorie’s eyebrows rose, and Doris grinned. “Yeah? Anyone we know?”

“That - that lieutenant from Dog Company? Beat Sobel at Olympics day? Dark hair, always looks like he’s about to murder someone?”

“The one Ruth likes? Speirs?” Marjorie gave a low whistle. “Good for that ATS girl.”

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t really feel like sticking around to see if he really does like murdering people, so I dropped the papers on a chair and high-tailed it out.” June took a deep breath. “And I’m really, really hoping he didn’t follow me.”

“Suit yourself,” Doris said with a grin. “I wouldn’t mind him being in the middle of anything.”


	32. Silence - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> enchi-elm: Can I get some Joan Warren/Dick Winters and a shared cigarette in the rain? (or other non-smoking vice)

He found Joan outside in the little covered doorway to what had once been the coachyard, overcoat around her shoulders like a cloak, sipping her gin and studying the storm. For the moment he slipped outside the sounds of the pub behind them were loud and intense - and then the door closed, and there was silence.

“Sorry about them,” he offered, trying to make conversation. “They are getting a little loud.”

“No, let ‘em be. I just…needed a little air. Sometimes the pipesmoke gets a bit much.” She sighed and glanced out into the night, pulling her coat a little tighter and taking a sip of her gin. "You ever… find something comforting about listening to the rain?“ she asked, and Dick, who’d never thought about it before, shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the wall, as she was doing, to admire the view out into the November night. 

"My parents’ house in Wyoming had this big wide sleeping porch, for when the summers got hot,” she said after a few moments in silence. “And it was the nicest thing to lie out there, in the summer, and listen to the storms roll in. All the little raindrops on the roof, feeling the temperature drop, watching out on the horizon for that perfect bolt of lightning. Sometimes on nights like this, I just…listen, and I’m back at home on that porch, ten years old with my book and my flashlight.”

He could see it now, little Joan with her pigtails, and for a moment he was ten again, too, in shorts and a tshirt, under a pup tent in the backyard with his father. “I always forget you’re from out West.”

She chuckled. “Most people do. I lived in DC for so long that people just assume I was born there - I speak the language too well. And I’ll freely admit nothing about me says country girl. But one of my guilty pleasures is silence.”

“Guilty?” What was to feel guilty about?

“My mother used to say at parties that if you weren’t talking up your cause, or listening attentively to the person who was, you weren’t trying hard enough. What am I doing out here, if I could be inside making friends?”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” She took another sip of her drink. “You should go back in, or they’ll think we’re up to something.”

He felt his face color a little, and nodded, rising from his seat against the wall, opening the door and letting the warmth and chatter of the pub filter back out into the night.

“Hey, Winters.” He turned back towards her voice. “Thanks for checking in on me.”

He nodded, wondering if she could see the color in his face in the dark of the doorway. “Any time.”


	33. Dream in C - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jamie506101: 15 from the kissing prompt (Kisses over shoulders) for my OTP Dick and Joan please!

He had only closed his eyes for a moment and she was there.

“Your coffee’s empty,” she said, hands smoothing his shoulders. “Get you some more?”

“Don’t think I need any,” he replied, leaning back a little and enjoying her touch. It had been a long day, and his shoulders ached, and he had been half-wishing that someone - anyone! - would notice. She laughed a little, a warm and throaty sound, and drew her hands away. “Hey.” He turned away from the desk and caught her hand, pulled her back, back, towards the desk, until she relented and sat down on his lap, smiling and wrapping herself around his still-aching shoulders. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked with a muted smile.

“Nowhere,” she responded, waiting so he could kiss her, properly, a series of lengthening interludes that deepened and drew them together, his hand over her thigh, pulling her closer so that he could whisper, where only she could hear,

“I think I love you.”

She only laughed again and smiled.

Dick blinked, the type writer and the half-written report coming back into focus. This wasn’t a study in a small city bungalow - it was the upper story of a borrowed billet in France. It was late. It was dark. He was far more tired than he’d thought.

“More coffee, sir?” Barnes was at the top of the stairs, stainless steel pot in hand.

Dick looked at his empty cup and sighed. “Sure.”


	34. Carry You - Marjorie + Lipton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> youretheobiwanforme: Ok so I was having fun with the generator, and this doesn't strike me as Thirsty Thursday content but I came across 'any girl gang member carrying Carwood Lipton' and it just spoke to me.

“What the hell, Lip, you get tired or something?”

“He’s got a bullet in the ankle, Skinny, lay off him,” Marjorie said savagely. “How you doing back there?”

“Just great, Marj,” Lipton said with a pained smile.

“Oh, so we’re letting the girls carry this company now?” Skinny asked with a grin as Marjorie let him slide off her back once they were behind the wall. There were snickers, and Marjorie just…broke.

“LISTEN.” They stared. She had her Angry Teacher Voice out and she didn’t even care. She was hot, and she was tired, and she was angry as hell, at the German who’d shot Lip’s ankle and whoever had dinged her pack and made her lose her extra ammunition, at the lack of hot food and the fourteen hour day they were having and the whole damn war. “I have hefted you all over walls, I have pulled you out of rubble heaps and out of dragging chutes, I have listened to every one of your sob stories from home and cried over them with you. I’ve humped more of your gear than you all will ever admit to.” She took a breath, her eyes on fire. “I have carried **_every single one of you_** at some point- - But that is the first, and ** _only_** , time I’ve ever had to carry **_anything_** for Lip. So you all can just…shut up about it.” She took a deep breath, trying to catch herself. “Now where’s the goddamn aid station? That man needs a medic and he’s not going to get one sitting here.”

They snapped to. “We’re going, Sarge, on it, right away.”

She nodded, wild-eyed and still spitting mad, trying to unscrew the cap of her canteen with shaking hands. She took a swig, wiped the back of her mouth, and handed it to Lipton. “And what are you smiling about?“ she asked, knowing he, of all people, didn’t mean a damn thing by it.

He took the canteen, still smiling. "I was just thinking about you and Allen having kids,” he said, and Marjorie gave him a cuff on the head for effort.

“Wiseass.”


	35. Wayfaring Stranger - Skip + Connie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: From your generator (and appropriately so given the post you reblogged the other day) any easy company girl learning an instrument with Skip Muck!

Somewhere between Camp Sturgis and New York, Skip Muck and Connie Schmidt had both acquired harmonicas. 

Somewhere between Camp Sturgis and New York, the feeling went, the yokel who’d sold them to the pair had some kind of death wish.

Anyone learning an instrument isn’t exactly pleasant, and would-be harmonica players are no exception, particularly when several thousand of your friends and neighbors are crammed into the belly of a ship, but Skip was plugging along on the dime-store instrument with a dedication that would have made the masters of the art proud, flipping back and forth in the tissue-paper thin booklet of technique, trying to glean more information from its tiny pages. Connie was quieter about the business, preferring to do her practicing topside where she was less likely to get complaints. (Skip claimed that his seasickness was better in the belly of the boat, and that the blues sounded better with the echo.) “No one’s got a problem with Connie’s playing!” Skip complained, when one more very frustrated audience member threatened to stomp the tiny instrument into a pancake.

“That’s ‘cause none of us have ever heard her, genius.”

“She could be awful!”

“She’s actually pretty good,” Irene said, and Skip, feeling abandoned, demanded that she be sent for to prove it. 

Several minutes later, she appeared, a little windswept and sea-sprayed for her time on deck, and not exactly excited to have an audience. "I don’t know, I’m still learning. Irene’s been helping me a little.“

"Try the one we been working on,” Irene encouraged, and Connie, with a little shrug, produced her instrument, limbered up a little, and took a deep breath, before the slow, mournful notes of some kind of gospel hymn began to rise. Men stopped to listen, the silence almost eerie - until, after a couple of dropped notes, Irene started to sing.

_I am a poor wayfaring stranger,  
A-traveling through this world below  
There is no sickness, toil, or danger  
In that bright world to which I go._

“She can play,” Tipper whispered.

“Forget that,” Malarkey replied in the same tone, “did anyone else know Irene could _sing_?!”

Thus emboldened, Connie continued the next verse unaccompanied, the long notes shimmering up through the silence.

And that was it - two verses, and the song was done. Connie stopped, and shrugged, and pocketed the harmonica. After that, Skip let his own playing go, and there was a steady stream of visitors wondering, almost bashfully, where that girl who’d been singing that hymn was, and was she seeing anyone, and would she like to be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants a sample of period harmonica music, I just learned about Gwen Foster this morning. In the 30s and 40s, the harmonica is still a poor man’s instrument, and would have been more common among southern blues players.
> 
> The song Wayfaring Stranger dates to around 1858; it’s also sometimes called the Libbey Prison Hymn.
> 
> I know everyone’s real familiar with this song from 1917, but I really like the version by Rosemary Standley and Helstroffer’s Band from their album Love I Obey.


	36. Canteen - Doris + Bill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: Yearning rp meme- "can you believe they thought we were a couple?" Bonus points if it's not our fave otp, Joan and Dick because that's too easy!

It was already seven, there were bars to visit and beers to drink, and as far as Bill was concerned, they were burning nightlight here. “So, we going or what?” he asked, impatiently waiting as Doris checked her purse one more time to make sure she had her lipstick, her money, and the half a dozen other fripperies deemed necessary by civilized women everywhere. But then, the Red Cross hostel for women seemed a classier joint than most of the hotels in this city - certainly classier than the one Bill was in. Maybe higher end hotels demanded more of women.

“Give me a minute, will you?”

“Get her to jump into Europe with a chute and a gun, she’s fine, get her out on the town and she needs a goddamn drugstore,” Bill said sourly, to no one in particular.

“Okay, we’re going!” Doris buttoned up her purse and headed for the door. “We’re going.”

“Nice night out to be out with the missus, eh?” the doorman said with a polite smile, opening the door to let them out into the street. It took a half a block before Doris, working through the still unfamiliar accent, realized what he’d said and snorted.

“Can you believe that? He thought we were a couple.”

But when she looked at Bill, he wasn’t laughing. “What, you ashamed of being seen out with me?” he asked, clearly hurt. “Rough guy from Philly not good enough for you? Probably want some skinny mick like Babe, take you dancing - or, or some big tall silent guy like Christiansen.”

It was obviously a sorer subject than she’d thought.“No. Never.” Doris wrapped her arm around his and kissed him in a way that was not strictly friendly on the cheek. "I like this rough guy from Philly just fine. And if they think we’re a couple - let ‘em.“ The women across the street pushed their heads together to share a giggle at the two Americans, their eyes following the pair with obvious interest. "Probably just jealous of this big hunk of paratrooper I got taking me around,” Doris said with a grin, cozying into Bill’s arm.

“Gonna take a lot more than that to butter me up,” he replied, still a little bitter, but she could tell his shoulders had loosened up a little, and he gave the next guy who tried to whistle at them a thorough chewing out.


	37. And There Was Only One Bed - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> easy-company-tradition: Hello it’s me a basic bitch so for thirsty Thursday I suggest “we can share the bed. if that’s not weird.” With Dick and Joan 👀 if this doesn’t inspire you that’s cool too. Have a lovely day

Lipton didn’t seem to like it any more than they did. He was in charge of securing temporary accommodations and had done so admirably, parceling the rest of the house out like a champion. Unfortunately, he’d left what had been one of the larger bedrooms for his two remaining officers - the master bedroom, with its one, conspicuously large iron-wrought bed. “Sorry - only room left in the house.”

“It’s fine, Lip, thank you,” Dick said. Usually it was SOP for Joan to get her own room, or at least the decency of a curtain, but needs must.

Lipton nodded, and moved off downstairs, to secure the exits or make coffee or set a patrol, whatever dozen small tasks he knew would make his officers happier the next morning and his soldiers safer. _What did I do to deserve Carwood Lipton?_ Dick wondered to himself, looking out the shutters for a moment and then turning back to the room.

Joan hadn’t moved. “Flip you for it,” he offered, gesturing towards the bed, long since stripped of its sheets.

“Rank wins,” came her prompt reply.

“No, you take it,” he pressed, feeling uncomfortable that they should be arguing over, all things, a bed. “Blanket’s yours, I’ll take the couch.” His eyes raked over the sad, sprung thing from the last century, all Victorian ormolu and patchy velvets. He would be poked and prodded, but at least no one would have a way to side-eye him the next day and make some crack about his lone female officer and only one bed.

But Joan, it seemed, didn’t have a lot of time for gestures. “Dick, that’s silly, you’ll freeze. We’ll…we’ll both take the couch, and we can share the blanket. If that’s not…strange.” He was trying her patience, he could tell. “It’s cold, Dick. You’re human. No one’s going to judge you just this once on your apparent lack of chivalry.”

He considered the alternatives, and decided she was right.

It was nice, to sit down, sprung springs and all, and take the load off his feet. Joan unslung her rifle, setting it carefully down nearby, within reach, and took a seat beside him, carefully spreading the blanket over them both and tucking it over her own shoulders before leaning backwards and closing her eyes. It looked painful.

“You’re never going to sleep like that,” he said, finally, watching her try to make her head comfortable along the elaborately carved back of the couch. He patted his shoulder. “If no one’s going to judge.”

She looked grateful, moving in closer and laying her head against the pillow of his shoulder, before clumsily patting her own head. “Fair’s fair.”

It was an open invitation - and he was tired, and she was right. He laid his head against her own, the two of them shoring each other up like so many bricks in a wall as he tucked the blanket around his own shoulders and moved a little closer to her to renegotiate their balance. They had a blanket. They had each other. They would not freeze. He drifted off to the oddly calming lullaby of Joan’s breath, faintly whistling through her nose, vaguely aware that her head had a pleasant heaviness to it, that he enjoyed the feeling of her body sinking into his, and that if he was going to freeze to death, at least whoever found his body would know something about him - that he’d loved someone, that he’d allowed them to be close.

It was several hours later when he awoke, fitfully, his body too used to the soldier’s three hour catnaps. Someone was moving in the hallway - but Joan’s eyes were still closed, her breath still in the shallowness of sleep.

“Idiots.” It was Nix, talking in stage whisper. “Give them a perfectly good bed and they take the damn couch.”

“Kinda thin walls, Lew.” That was Harry.

“We wouldn’t have said anything!” A long pause. “Okay, we would have said something.” Another pause. “Well, wouldn’t you? It’s damn cold.”

“Too cold,” came Harry’s laconic reply. “Let ‘em sleep. They’re cute like that.”

“Yeah.” Another pause, an almost wistful sigh. “They fit.”


	38. It Can Be Done - Lewis + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s @julianneday1701‘s birthday today, and I gave her free rein of the prompt list that I’ll be sharing with you all tomorrow as a birthday treat! Happy birthday, you lovely woman. I hope this year is excellent to you.
> 
> So, here’s Lewis, Joan, and “Try not to fall in love with me” - along with some banter, because we love us some banter, and some leftover crackfic comments from our server the other day, because I could.

Lew watched Sink and the others leave before joining the officers at the front of the room, sneaking behind Joan to lay his hands on her shoulders. “Hiya, honey, long day at the office?”

“What have I told you about leaving work at the door?” Joan responded tartly, taking Lew’s casual kiss on the cheek as though this were the most normal thing in the world, while Compton snorted and Welsh rolled his eyes, and Dick seemed not to know where to look, while among the replacements, poor private Heffron, with beet-red confusion, looked at Randleman and asked, utterly scandalized, “That’s Captain Nixon’s WIFE?!?”

(Guarnere and the others simply laughed and proceeded to read him in on the joke, which did little to quell Heffron’s blushes.)

“When are you going to let that work wife joke go, Lew?” Joan asked, gathering up her papers and greatcoat and joining the rest of the officers on their way out to the weekend and the comfortable confines of the Blue Boar. “You’re traumatizing the replacements.”

“When it stops being funny,” Lewis said with a smile, holding the door open for her. “Or when you actually agree to marry me. Whichever comes first.”

“Nix, pigs will fly first,” Harry said from the background. “Sink will headline our talent show first. Hitler will _surrender_ first.”

“I know for a fact you’re trying very hard not to fall in love with me, Joan Warren. This is a war of attrition and I am winning.”

“It has been very difficult,” Joan replied, deadpan. “But it’s a struggle I’ve been willing to undertake, for the sake of democracy and women everywhere.”

“Hark at her, gentlemen, women everywhere.” He waved his hands in mock hysteria. “As if I could be so cheapened.”

“There is a practical end to my resistance, Lew,” Joan said with a knowledgeable smile. He paused, waiting for her answer. “If we keep this up, you’re not leaving little Nixons all over Europe.”

There was a general gasp from the rest of the officers, the requisite ooOOOhhhh that usually comes after the utterance of ‘fighting words.’

But Lewis was unhindered. “What are your thoughts on little Nixons, while we’re talking about this? Two? Three? Private school? Public? Can we get another dog?”

She huffled, rolling her eyes and smiling. “Lewis, let it go. ”

But Nixon was just hitting his stride - he’d spent all day with serious men discussing serious things and now he was finally getting a chance to relax. “These are considerations to be made! We know Harry’s - What are your thoughts on kids, Dick?”

“Hadn’t much considered them,” Dick said, his voice halfway between annoyance and amusement.

“Gonna need to start doing that, or the missus will surprise you,” his friend said, patting him on the shoulder. Dick looked like there was nothing he would dislike doing more.

Nixon had cooled a little bit by the time they’d walked all the way to the Blue Boar, as Compton split off for the Bell and their darts board, and they picked up a few more stragglers from Baker, Dog, and Idle.

Lewis found Joan again after the officers had installed themselves in their usual places along the bar, her roost in the corner providing a clear view of the whole room.

“I hope you know there’s a practical consideration to my flirtations, too,” he said, before Joan could start complaining.

“Which is?”

He smirked, looking very proud of himself. “If I’m the main thing going, no one else will try.” He let that sink in. “And-”

Joan sighed, knowing she would have to take his bait. “And?”

He leaned close to her ear, whispering in much the same way lover’s secrets are delivered. “To show Dick that it can be done." 

And, bomb thus released, he made his way back up to the bar, letting Joan sit with that and ponder over her gin.


	39. Hidden - Chuck + June

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Chapter 10 of DS, I speculated that at least one member of the Girl Gang was getting a little hot and heavy. Speculate no more, folks! (It’s not one of the usual suspects.)
> 
> Adults making consensual decisions below the cut.

At Mackall, as at Toccoa, the lingering threat of having a hundred guys know your business was enough to keep any but the absolutely most dedicated from fooling around. A few men had openly tried their chances, with little success - and those that had been successful had been keeping their accomplishments, and their meeting places, very, very secret.

No one else in the company, for instance, knew about this particular storage shed, or its particular use on Friday nights, except for the two people now in it producing a steady cadence of breathy, panting sounds, building to a close, and then - a stifled cry! - finishing. (Successfully, a candid outside observer might have ventured.)

“Little quick today, were we?” June asked with a smile as her lover negotiated his way out from between her legs, cleaning himself up as she pulled her underwear and pants back on, and went fumbling in her jacket pocket for her lighter and cigarettes. "We’re not paying by the hour or anything.“

"Sorry, just…a little anxious, is all.” Chuck hitched his own trousers back over his hips, leaving his belt undone, and waved away her offer of a cigarette, trying to find some meaning in the beating of his heart. “Still don’t understand how you found this place.”

June snorted. “Try growing up with seven siblings in a two flat in Jersey and see how good you get at finding some privacy.”

“Seven?”

June nodded, and Chuck responded with a nod of his own, adding this to the small list of facts he was building about her life before.

They didn’t usually do much talking, on these…dates of theirs. This relationship was more transactional, two people who had discovered a common interest in acquiring a certain service that the other was in a position to fulfill. Strictly buisness - a straight in and out kind of affair with very little in the way of foreplay except whatever was necessary to get started. June wasn’t here to be seduced, and she was very up front about that, but what had started as something infinitely casual had begun, at least from Chuck’s end of things, to beckon towards something more. He found himself wanting to linger, to talk, to learn more about her, to hear about her seven siblings and her time in the polio ward and waiting tables and…everything, really.

“Did you want to…again?” he asked, hoping to make her stay. “I brought two.”

“In a minute, maybe,” she mused. “Aren’t you afraid Talbert’s going to start missing some of his condoms?”

Chuck snorted. “No. He’s not taking inventory.” He glanced over at June, staring at the ceiling with her cigarette in hand, perfectly content. She was mighty pretty, like this, just after they’d - but she was mighty pretty plenty of other times, too, and he wanted to tell her so, but never could quite seem to find the words for it. "June, you ever want to…go see a movie sometime, or something?“

"What, you mean, together? In public?”

The way she said it made it sound as though the idea of being seen with him was distasteful, and Chuck suddenly felt very small. “Well, yeah, sure.”

June gave a little sigh, exhaling her smoke. “You know we can’t do that.”

“Do I?”

She looked at him like he was simple. “I don’t know about you all, but Annie Sutton read us the riot act on starting relationships. Says it destroys unit morale.”

Chuck did remember a lecture of some kind, in the far distant days of Basic before the girls had actually joined the company, and Sink had said that there would be no fooling around between any of his soldiers. He’d assumed the girls had gotten the same lecture. “What would Annie Sutton know about it?”

“Girls can like girls, Chuck,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Wouldn’t suprise me if we’ve got a few guys who like guys in this unit, either. And that’s fine - long as they aren’t getting bitchy about who gets to fuck who. That’s why we’re keeping this low.” She smiled at him. “So no one gets hurt.”

Chuck nodded, taking a deep breath and inhaling the smell of her cigarette, the faint smell of perfume in her hair, the earthiness of the shed, and wondered if he was a fool for agreeing to this, or for feeling a little hurt himself.


	40. More Than Anyone Else: Molly + Billie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous  
> I know the prompt comes from a romantic context, but could you do a platonic one for "You matter to me. More than anyone else." between any of your OCs. Just to get a better sense for the bffs in the girl gang.

Letters from home weren’t always pleasant.

Requests for money, requests for prayers, the notice of fires, of sudden losses - of deaths. Try as they might, no family could keep the wider world out of their news from home. Time marched on - and humans were only human. There had already been one or two Dear John letters, girls who’d decided they’d have better luck with a different fellow, and they’d taken those in stride, curses muttered, ill will wished upon the sender, and their friends, male and female alike, reminding the man that he was a catch, a gem, a hell of a guy.

Back in Aldbourne, after Normandy, the mail was finally catching up with them, and Molly looked up from her own haul (a couple of letters from college friends and co-workers and a package from her parents) after Billie made a sound of disgust and stomped outside, taking whatever it was with her, the sound of crying shortly following.

Glances were exchanged. “Give her a minute,” Ruth said, looking at the address on the package. “It’s from her mother.”

“Her brothers?” someone asked. (Billie had two, both in the navy.) Ruth shrugged.

“I’ll go,” Molly offered, setting aside her letters and heading outside to go find her friend.

Billie was in the Thinking Post, a log set back into the hedge in what served, somewhat, as the garden, an open bit of grass with a few tallish trees and the occasional wildflower. “Everything okay?” Molly asked, hands in her pockets.

“She sent me gloves.” Billie threw the box at the ground, a pair of white visiting gloves emerging from their tissue paper. This sounded pretty par for the course for Billie’s mother, who was very active in a number of social causes and (to hear Billie tell it) gave a wonderful afternoon tea. “None of the things I asked for - none of the things I needed. White _fucking_ gloves.”

As tragedies went, it seemed minor, but Molly had heard enough of Billie’s letters from home to know this was one more straw on an already overladen camel. They had just invaded Fortress Europe - had fought, bled, and, in more than a few instances, _died_ there - and Mrs. Mitchell was harping about gloves. “I’m sorry, Billie.”

She sniffled. “I should be used to it. After two boys she wanted a china doll she could play dress-up with and she got me instead.” She wiped her eyes - she’d obviously done a fair bit of crying over the letter, which was still in her hand. Molly almost didn’t want to read it. “I just…keep fighting this battle with her,” Billie went on. "First it was good girls don’t go to to college, and then it was good girls don’t go to work, and then it was good girls don’t join the army, and now it’s…“ Billie gestured, defeated with the letter, unable to even form the words. "I just can’t win, can I? My own damn mother. It’s like what I want doesn’t matter - like ** _I_** don’t matter.”

“Hey now.” Billie looked up from her letter to see Molly was on her knees on the ground in front of her. “You matter to _me_ ,” she said. “More than anyone else in this _whole_ company. And there’s no one else I’d trust more than you - white gloves or no. And you matter to a whole lot of people in there,” she said, pointing back at the bunkhouse. “And I know that ‘cause I just watched a bunch of 'em getting ready to punch whoever hurt you.” That, at least, made Billie smile. “So let’s sit a minute, and then go call off Perco before he hurts himself,” she offered. Billie nodded, picking up the gloves and closing them back into their box, scooching over on the log so Molly could sit down, too. “You’re a popular lady.,” she said, angling to get her friend to smile. “That Heffron kid looked like he was getting ready to get in, too, and he’s only been here two weeks.” 


	41. Persistance - Lewis, Dick/Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> majwinters: In honour of thirsty Thursday, I’d love to see Dick and Joan almost getting caught by Nix (let’s face it Nix totally knows)

Lewis Nixon persisted in knocking on doors because he was afraid of fire.

(He was a realist - if he caught his friends in a compromising position, there was a high likelihood one of them would explode, and he really didn’t feel like doing the paperwork on that.)

Today was no different - he gave them the usual ten seconds, and then entered Dick’s office to find Joan sitting on Dick’s desk, casually kicking her heels and idly examining a paperweight and Dick surveying the view outside his window and fiddling with his tie. A paper fluttered suspiciously to the floor, as if some sudden movement had disturbed it.

He wanted to laugh. _God, you two. Wasn’t enough to wait until the end of the damn war and now you have to sneak around like a couple of teenagers. We’re all adults. We know. We knew before you knew._

"Sink’s office in ten minutes?“ he said, looking between Joan’s disinterest and Dick’s suspiciously blank face, half-turned towards the window. "He’s got new rules about prisoner transfers.”

“I’ll be there,” Dick assured him, turning around looking immaculate. _Oh, just once, I want to open this door and find you two absolutely filthy,_ Nixon thought to himself, keeping his eye roll to himself. But that would require forgoing his knock, and if he did so, there was the chance they would go even further underground than they were already, and that he could not have. He nodded, stepping back out into the corridor and clicking the door shut, quickly pressing his ear into the crack in the door, trying not to laugh.

“He knows.” Dick sounded defeated.

“He’s the intelligence officer,” Joan reminded, patient but amused. “He’s supposed to know things.”

“Not our things.” His voice was soft, vaguely annoyed.

“Mmm, no, not our things. Mmmmph - _go._ You’re going to be late.” A wife sending her husband off to work - a secretary sending her boss back from lunch. He could hear them all in Joan’s voice.

“It’s a good thing you don’t wear lipstick.” A pause, another breathy groan. “Please don’t start.”

Nix moved away from the door and leaned, suspiciously casual, against the other side of the hallway, waiting until Dick emerged, coat and folio in hand, carefully shutting the door behind him and turning around to see his freind, grinning.

“…you heard that.”

“Every word,” Nix said, triumphantly getting to his feet. “And I live for the day when I find you covered in Max Factor.”


	42. Don't Go: Buck + Frankie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: “Don’t go” for a pairing of your choice!

It was strange to hear birdsong again.

For the last two years, every place she’d slept had been shelled to pieces before the hospital had even thought of putting up their tents, the local wildlife long gone in search of deeper holes and darker forests, and it was still a novel thing to look outside a window here in England and see birds in the trees, or a squirrel running across a garden path.

Frankie looked out the window of the abandoned cottage and smiled at the sunrise, carefully moving Buck’s arm aside so she could get out of bed and get going. It was early enough that she wouldn’t be missed - and she’d never want to disturb a man while he was sleeping so soundly. She’d had enough of unsound sleepers in her wards for a lifetime already. Let him lie - he was unspoiled still.

“No, no, don’t go,” Buck said, groping blindly for her hand and trying to pull her back down into bed. (He’d obviously been more awake than she’d thought.) “Tell Eisenhower I get ten more more minutes.”

Frankie sighed. “Invasion of Europe’s not going to wait on us, Buck.” _It’s not going to wait on anyone._

“That’s only ‘cause Mamie doesn’t look like you.” He sat up and wrapped his arms around her, pillowing his head into her shoulder. His chest rose and fell into the curve of her spine, his breath whispering past her ears and she smiled, for a moment, for the warm solidness of him, and wished she did not have to go.

“You’re a terrible flirt." 

She could hear his laughter through her skin, and wished that she could stay. "It’s my best feature,” he replied, purring into her ear, his hands searching her thighs, slowly trying to move her knees back apart.

She captured her hands, quite sure they had no time for that. “I thought you said your eyes were your best feature.”

“Lieutenant, I’m pretty sure I said something _else_ was my best feature, and I’m also pretty sure you agreed with me at least …two or three times last night.”

Oh, that was true. What you saw truly was what you got with Buck, and any assumptions about his anatomy had been proved very correct. “What are you going to do with ten minutes, Buck? Truly. I need to wash, I need to get dressed, and you, Adonis, need to get back to camp before someone notices your fine athletic ass is gone.”

“You’re no fun,” Buck complained, but he let her go.

 _No,_ Frankie thought bitterly to herself, finding her stockings and fiddling with the buttons on her shirt. _I’m not. I’m a realist, and reality’s catching up with me. I get you for tonight, Buck Compton, and maybe part of tomorrow, and after that you belong to the War - your arms, and your legs, and your unscarred skin. And like all her playthings, she’ll rip you up, and then she’ll give you back to me in pieces. And I hate it, but it’s true, and I’ll have to live with it every damn day you’re gone._


	43. Alive and Coarse - Dick + Joan - NSFW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junojelli  
> 'This doesn't mean anything' - Dick waking up after a very, very nice dream about a certain OC that may have made a mess 😏🤭 Juno xx
> 
> I’m going to have to start calling this Smutty Saturdays, or something, for all the content that some people give me on Thursdays that doesn’t quite make the cut for Thursday.
> 
> 18+ filth with feelings below the cut, and it ain’t strictly consensual filth, either.

In his dream, he was back at Brecourt. 

He could feel the _crump-crump-crump_ of the artillery, could feel the blood pounding in his ears, the release of every bullet from his gun. Time was moving around him like a stream, and he was in it, but not of it, his senses like the edge of a knife, alert and alive. His heart was pounding and his limbs were light and free, and his whole body was gorged on it, the thrill of battle, and he wanted one thing, and one thing only, to feel more alive still.

She was there, in the bombed out ruins of the CP, and his whole body felt dirty and clean all at once, alive and coarse and strong and proud and cunning, and in half a moment he’d shoved her against the wall and started kissing her, violently, and she was wrestling with his webbing, and he was ripping at her jacket, shoving down her pants, shoving down his own, her hands raking his hair, and he was unmaking her, and she was unmaking him. She was a field he would take and a thing he would conquer, and this was a fight that only he could win, and the sounds she made were better than battle, _yes, Dick, yes, yes, please…_

He woke up feeling wrung-out and exhausted, as if he’d run a marathon, and realized, with a kind of sickening dread, that his body had paid no mind at all to the fact that the woman in the dream wasn’t there. He smelled of sweat, and sex, and shame, shame that he’d done this, this thing that made him little better than a boy. And, worse still, that his mind had played the trick of being so cruel and coarse to a woman that he - that he _admired_? A woman he called his friend?

_God help me._

“Have a nice time?” Harry asked, grinning as he came in from the bathroom, and Dick quailed a little under his sheets, remembering where his mind had been. “So you _are_ like the rest of us mortals on occasion- I was beginning to wonder.” He threw an extra towel at Dick. “You’re lucky it’s Saturday - she does linens today. Told her already we’d load our sheets up and save her the stairs. What did you have to drink last night?”

“Half of Joan’s gin,” Dick said, feeling truly disgusting. “Our glasses got mixed up - I didn’t notice, un-until…” _Until I’d drunk it all._

“Well, I think we can safely say if that’s what it does to you, Frosty, I’d stick to sodawater.”

“Don’t tell anyone, Harry.” He didn’t care if it sounded like begging. This was the worst he’d ever felt in his entire life, and very little of it was actually from the gin.

Harry caught his eye in the mirror. “Who, me? Silent as a confessional.” He went on fixing his tie, and paused. “But I hope she was pretty,” he added, grinning into the mirror, before stepping out into the library and closing the door behind him. Dick sat up in bed and scowled, finally finding the strength in his legs to go to his footlocker and find a clean pair of boxers, a new undershirt, and shuffle to the bathroom, and deal with the remains of this mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep seeing this gifset from Generation Kill referencing a combat jack, so this my take on that. Apologies to Carl Sandberg for borrowing ‘alive and coarse and strong and proud and cunning’ from his poem Chicago.


	44. Alive and Coarse, 2  - Dick + Joan - NSFW

In her dreams, she was back in France.

The sky was clear, and blue, and there was wind in the tall grass, stirring up the smell of flowers. She closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight on her eyelids, the breeze on her cheeks.

He was beside her, lying in the field, eyes closed, breathing even. How peaceful he looked when he slept! The sun glinted on his eyelashes, the golden redness of his hair.

She planted a hand near his head, and, leaning over, brushed a hair off his forehead and kissed his eyes. His hands reached for her, smiling blindly as she moved her leg to straddle his hips, her lips brushing first one cheek, and then the other, the bridge of his nose and the cupid’s bow of his mouth until finally kissing his lips. His hands slid up her legs, cradling her, the one pair of hands that hadn’t taken a single chance at palming her ass finally doing so, and she began rocking her body against him to answer, in so many words that were not words at all _, you beautiful man, in another place, if you’d only ask I’d let you take me to dinner or take me to bed._

Joan shuddered awake and took a deep breath, tiny slits of sunlight peeking out around the curtain. She could feel the pulse pounding between her legs, a dull ache. _It was a dream, Joan. It wasn’t real, and it stays right here where it belongs._

_And who says he’d have you, anyway?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joan’s dream makes sense to her - it’s tangible and real, taking place in an imagined future. She knows already what she wants, and the dream is a realization of that. Dick’s dream is chaotic and disordered, and takes place in the past - his mind is trying to rearrange his thoughts and feelings and experiences to find some order or meaning in them.


	45. Come Here Often - Lewis + Eileen - NSFW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> majwinters: Smutty Saturday you say? Well in that case, Nix is just trying to give himself a hand and he can’t stop thinking about a certain someone no matter how hard he tries 😉
> 
> NSFW.

For whatever reason, Nix always started in a nightclub. 

There’d always been something…alluring, about the idea of getting it on in the dark, having someone get him hard underneath all his nice clothes while he worked to hold in the audible part of his pleasure. (He was noisy - Kathy’d said so once, and he hadn’t been sure if it was a compliment or not.) He imagined her next to him in the plush corner table, resplendent in satin, carefully removing her rings and setting them down on the table next to her wine glass (merlot, very dry) and slipping her hand under the tablecloth. He always made it easier by unbuttoning his own pants and closing his eyes. (Kathy had been game to do this once or twice in when they’d been dating, but since marriage, and Michael, she’d lost some of the nerve.) This was easier at home, when he could put a record or the radio on, provide a soundtrack. The ship’s engines were kind of a buzzkill, but he needed this, and he didn’t care.

“Come here often, handsome?” But that wasn’t Kathy’s voice in his ear. _Oh, fuck._ God, what had it been - ten months? And she was still here, in his dreams, taunting him. She belonged in places like this, his sordid, sexy nightclub, belonged in dresses that hugged every luscious curve and made it impossible for a man to get a word in edgewise unless you wanted to take the whole damn thing off.

And he wanted, so badly, to take everything off of Eileen Hammond, and have Eileen take everything off of him.

“Yes,” he responded in his head, his hand her hand, traveling up and down, closing his eyes to make the bulkhead and the engines and the smell of motor oil fade away. “Yes, I do.”


	46. Cannon Towels - Marjorie + Liebgott

Normal people didn’t hang advertisements on the walls as art - but then, normal advertisements didn’t usually feature a bunch of guys in skivvies.

“What is this?” Joe asked, pointing with disgust to the clustered collection of what he now saw were towel advertisements, neatly pinned to the wall with thumbtacks.

“Oh, those?“ Marjorie grinned. "One of my girlfriends from college sent me those. She said if the boys could have girlie pictures up in their bunks, we were welcome to do the same. Thank you, Cannon advertising department.”

Joe leaned in for a closer look and scowled. “No one washes like that!”

“Be a hell of a lot more entertaining if you did,” Doris said with a grin, setting the entire room laughing.

“They don’t have one for the ETO,” June put in, now living solely to rile up Joe. “We were thinking of writing Cannon to tell them. What do you think - bathtime in the Kennet? Maybe a ‘Robin Hood and his merry men’ kind of a theme? We could have you swinging out into the river on a rope.”

“Compton wearing one of those silly green hats?”

“Sink in the background in his BVDs?”

Laughter burning in his ears, Liebgott stormed out, too steamed to say anything.

“What’s eating you?” Perco asked from over the top of his magazine.

“They’ve got pictures of naked men up in the women’s bunks!”

Lipton pointed silently at the veritable wall of photos tacked up around Talbert’s bunk, the calendar sized Vargas girl spilling down the wall near Skinny’s.

“…That’s different!”

Lipton frowned. “Is it?”


	47. Can't Stop - Ruth + Joe T.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the-scariest-librarian: I enjoy your Thirsty Thursday posts so much! Can I request the "I couldn't stop thinking about you" prompt with any of the Girl Gang OCs? ❤
> 
> Since part of the prompt implies something happened earlier…I have a short list of folks to whom this applies. Remember that Spin the Bottle thing from a couple of weeks ago? Here’s the interested parties being cute about it after.

It wasn’t like Joe to look nervous.

“Hey, Ruth, you got a minute? I gotta talk with you about something. Alone?”

“Catch you later,” Ruth said, sending Doris and Connie on their way, Doris looking backwards and making a pleased face over her shoulder, which Ruth answered with a hastily clenched fist. Doris rolled her eyes and kept walking.“Now, what’s so important other people can’t hear?” she asked, turning around to look at Joe, his hands in his pockets, trying to play casual.

“Look, the other night…what did you say? When you left?”

She noticed he didn’t say ‘after you kissed me,’ which would have been more accurate. “What did Liebgott think I said?”

“That I looked cute when I wasn’t being angry,” Joe repeated, brushing something invisible off his nose.

“That’s about right,” she confirmed.

“Did you…did you mean it?” Joe shifted on his feet, shoving his hands a little further into his pockets. “Because I…just…I couldn’t stop thinking about you, okay?”

Ruth stared, a smile slowly taking shape on her lips. “JoeToye, are you telling me that a big tough guy like you is perhaps admitting to maybe having some feelings?”

“Maybe,” he said, a touch evasive. “Yeah, that’s…that’s what I’m saying.”

“Feelings, or.. _.feelings_?” Ruth stepped closer and began adjusting the lapels on his jacket, fixing invisible mistakes in the alignment of his insignia.

Joe looked up at the sky as if he’d rather not admit to anything.“Kinda a little of both, if we’re being honest here,” he said, finally, a touch of color in his cheeks.

“You got anything now?” she asked, openly mischievous. “I’ve got no place to be for twenty minutes.” He stared. “Or we could start with you kissing me and see how we go,” she added, stepping back towards the wall. “I believe I’m owed at least one.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice.


	48. Necktie: June + Grant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: Please do the adjusting the necktie for Grant and June (can’t stop thinking about them since that piece from a few weeks ago!)

Marjorie and Joan continued their long look out past the football game, as two figures emerged from the hedges, pausing, quickly, in the shadow of the garden to adjust each other’s ties, fix their caps and, (in his case) brush some grass clippings off the back of his jacket, convinced no one could see them.

“And how long’s _that_ been going on?” Joan asked with quiet interest, watching the pair split, she business-like and direct, he lingering to watch her leave before setting off in the other direction, hands in his pockets, looking over his shoulder once or twice to watch her go.

Marjorie followed her eyes. “Mackall? Maybe earlier. I’ll give her one thing, June Fowler is one sneaky woman.”

“Wouldn’t have pegged her for it.”

“Wouldn’t have pegged him, either,” Marjorie replied. She’d known for a while that June was up to something, or someone, but Chuck Grant had not even made the list of possible suspects, let alone the top ten.

“You gonna say something?”

“Nah,” Marjorie said with a shrug. “They’re both being adults about it, far as I know, and June’s not stupid. Although Talbert was saying the other day his stash seemed low. Think we know now where some of ‘em are going.”


	49. Ice Cream - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junojelli: ♛: Sharing a dessert; Joan is the bringer of dairy desserts for her admirer.

The ice cream was a special treat. They’d shipped in, the chinwags said, from some plant the Army had set up in France so that the occupying Army could introduce Europe to the joys of the American soda fountain. (Coca Cola had already been bottling for ages - this was the next logical step.) And of course, the man in charge of the requisition had made extra sure that the officer’s club had gotten its own five gallon drum, which those who knew him would have told you he’d have been more than happy to eat entirely himself.

Thankfully, on the day that it arrived, Dick Winters was feeling generous. And for one Friday, the hotel bar was being temporarily seconded as an ice cream parlor, helpfully staffed by a couple of volunteers.

“Well, Major, what’ll it be?” Joan asked from behind the bar.

“Can you make me a malted? Extra whipped cream, chocolate sauce, two cherries?”

“No can do,” she replied with a smile. “Blender’s broken. Can do…plain vanilla - and the extra cherries, since you asked nice.”

“Cutest soda jerk on campus, right here,” said Nixon as he went by, playfully goosing Joan with a towel.

“I don’t know, Nix, her service is pretty lousy,” Dick shot back, making Joan smile. “Can’t even get me a malted.” She snorted and dug deep into the large cardboard drum with her scoop, fairly filling the bowl and producing the requested two cherries, setting them on top with a flourish. “Second one’s for my girlfriend,” he added with a slim smile.

“That so?” Joan nodded, and, knowing full well she had an audience, took one of the cherries back and popped it in her mouth.“Mighty nice of you to think of me,” she said with a grin, while the rest of the officer’s club fairly exploded, and Dick only looked pink with pleasure.


	50. Stop Sassing Your Mother: Marjorie + Lipton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> broadwaybaggins: Thirsty Thursday acts of intimacy prompts, “accidentally falling asleep together”, any couple you choose!

The morning after the dance found the company somewhat reorganized. Talbert’s bed was unslept in, hardly a surprise given the looks he’d been exchanging with one of the land girl contingent, and Gene Roe was conspicuously absent as well, doubtless to the house of the yet-unmet girlfriend. Shifty and Irene were found spooning together in Shifty’s bunk, both of them fully clothed and in no way indecent, and Joe rolled back into barracks at some early hour looking very pleased with himself. 

Proving the adage that the more things change the more they stay the same, early risers would have noticed Joan and Dick doing their customary separate early morning runs, neither of them having taken part in the previous night’s excesses.

But none of this compared to the obscene delight taken in finding Lipton and Marjorie sleeping slumped onto each other’s shoulders in the dayroom, the only rumples in their dress the result of having spent the night on a bench.

“Morning, kids,” Perconte said over breakfast, pulling the shade wide open until the pair of sergeants woke up in the morning sun blinking and squinting. “Anything you two want to share with the class?”

“Fuck off, Frank,” Marjorie said with verve, her hair looking worse the wear from a night spent sleeping sitting up. “We were waiting for you all to get home.”

“Thanks, Ma,” Frank replied with a grin.

“Stop sassing your mother,” Lipton put in sleepily, rising slowly to his feet and shuffling off to find some coffee. “Shouldn’t have to wait up all night for you hooligans.”


	51. Edelweiss - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> easy-company-tradition: Hello friend! If I'm not too late for Thirsty Thursday, might I suggested Dick and Joan with ♗: One falling asleep with their head in the other's lap. Thanks and have a lovely night 💙💙💙

At the summit of the hill, Dick turned around and surveyed the valley below. They’d been hiking for hours, following an old path up the side of the mountain to a place someone in the village had said was pretty enough to paint. He hadn’t lied. With the lake and the town spread out far below, it was the stuff picture postcards were made off, all in living, breathing technicolor. “God, that’s a view.”

He turned around to see Joan sitting down on a flat place in the rock, her pack on the ground beside her - not tired, exactly, just enjoying a different kind of view, digging in her rucksack for her canteen and uncapping it. She took a swig and held it out to him.

His lip curled into a smile. “Lieutenant Warren, did I give instructions that you could drink from your canteen?” He asked, trying (and failing) to imitate Sobel’s voice. She nearly spit out her water, tossing some in his general direction just to get him to flinch. He danced away, leaving her to her own devices, and wandered closer to the edges of the peak, appreciating, with silent wonder, the sounds of wind and leaves, the rapt silence of the mountain. They’d already passed the treeline and put on their jackets, the air here thinner and colder. From this point they could see for miles, and it was glorious.

There was a clump of flowers here, little spikes of white and yellow growing in a crevice in the rock. It fascinated him. He plucked a stem and brought it back to Joan, twirling it in his fingers as he sat down and offered to her.

“Edelweiss,” she said, taking the little flower from him, swapping him for the canteen. “It’s the symbol of the Alpine regiments. It only grows up here in the mountains.” She handed it back to him, and put the canteen back into her pack, breathing deeply. “People will tell you it’s the mark of a true soldier, to climb here and pick it.”

Dick spread out on the ground beside her, still studying the flower, his arm behind his head. He held it to his nose - it had a faint scent, like daisies. He looked backwards and saw Joan was watching him.

“Come here, you goof,” she said, dragging at the corner of his shirt, pulling him towards her until his head was on her lap, pillowed into the crook of her legs and the plane of her stomach. He reached up, trying (and failing) to tuck the flower into her hair; finally she simply took it and did it herself, the little flower a white spangle at her ear. Thus satisfied, he closed his eyes, crossing his arms and settling into her lap, feeling one of her hands card gently through his hair. All around him was the smell of rocks and mountain air, the slight heat of the early summer sun and that faint smell of flowers. This is it, he thought to himself. This must be heaven.


	52. Borrowed Jackets - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> youretheobiwanforme: Thirsty Thursday "is that my shirt?"
> 
> So, for ‘shirt’ we’re going to read ‘one of those hella cool leather bomber jackets with the 506 Pair of Dice emblem,’ okay?

There’d been some confusion at the coat rack, and as Dick looked at the impossibly slim sleeve of the bomber jacket in his hands, he had a realization. “Is that mine?” he asked, looking over at the only person who was still putting on a coat.

Joan, who’d just finished sliding her hands into sleeves that were far too long for her arms, looked down at the coat that was clearly cut to wider shoulders than hers and looked embarrassed. “I am so sorry,” she said, shrugging out of it and handing it back to him, swapping it for her own, their hands touching briefly as the coats were returned to their rightful owners.

But even after, there was a lingering sense that she was still there, and it was maddening. "You smell nice,“ Lew said, coming up to Dick and giving an appreciative sniff. "Who got cozy with you this morning?”

Dick stewed a little, embarrassed by the thought of the perfume’s wearer getting, as Nixon had put it, _cozy_. There was a flash of perfume somewhere on the jacket’s collar, picked up from the brief contact with her neck. It was the only answer. “Joan and I accidentally swapped jackets,” Dick replied. Nixon raised his eyebrows.

“Was that before or after you spent some time canoodling in the coat closet?” Dick felt his face turn beet red, knowing, of course, that they hadn’t been anywhere near the coat closet, let alone in it, but the implication had been there to be made. His friend only chuckled. “Oh, Dick, we have to work on your poker face.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong!” he said anxiously, feeling thoroughly scandalized.

“Oh, no,” Nixon replied over his shoulder. “We’re working on it for the day _you do._ ”

(Joan sat at her desk and closed her eyes. If she stayed still long enough, she could bring back the feeling of the too-large coat, the pleasant heaviness of it, the smell of its wearer’s aftershave. She could have stayed in it for hours.)


	53. NORWICH - Dick and Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @junojelli was talking earlier this week about how Nixon, in his ongoing flirtation with Joan, might break out some 1940s postal acronyms to add to memos going to E company. And then this happened.
> 
> Out of character? Probably. It’s Thursday!

These briefings were the very devil.

Lewis, at least, could be brisk, keeping his memoranda brief and to the point, but some of the replacement officers, kids just out of West Point who’d been taught to do things by the book, would go on and on at the opportunity, excited to show the Major they could be of some use. _God, were we all this annoying when we first started?_

Joan sipped her coffee and made sure her ‘vague interest’ face was still in place, adding a spire on the church she was currently doodling into the margin of her pad before getting an elbow in the side from Speirs, who passed her a small folded slip of paper under the table with her name, underlined, on the outer fold. She unfolded it, trying not to make noise, finding only a single word inside - NORWICH.

She looked up, scanning around the table before making brief eye-contact with the only person trying to catch her eye - the person who’d obviously sent the thing. (She recognized the sweep of the J.) He gave an almost imperceptible smile and leaned back in his chair a little, and she had the sudden urge to cross her legs, a sudden heat dropping into place. _Oh, you bastard._

She left the meeting as quickly as she could, disappearing into his office to wait. He took his time, even lingering out in the corridor for a moment talking to someone (another one of the eager lieutenants, probably) before coming inside and locking the door behind him.

“Did Nix read you in on all his naughty little acronyms?”

“Gave me a whole list,” came the reply, a pair of strong and familiar arms wrapping themselves around her, his lips in the shell of her ear. “Now, Lieutenant,” he said, as if they were still in the damn meeting, “what’s the status on those knickers?”

(She very nearly shrieked.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NORWICH: A World War Two postal acronym: KNickers Off Ready When I Come Home.


	54. Zip Me - Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> easy-company-tradition: Happy Sunday Merc! May I request “zip me” with ... you’re never going to guess ... Dick and Joan! I’m basic and I love these two, okay 💙 have a wonderful day!

Dick was looking forward to a quiet Saturday afternoon - most of the other officers had gone into Swindon for a show of some description, and he was settling in with a cup of cocoa and a book when he heard a sound of frustration from down the hallway. Joan emerged from one of the bedrooms, checked to see if the coast was clear, and then emerged, her hand holding something in the small of her back.

“Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid Lewis was still here. How are you with zippers?” She turned and presented her back, where a hank of her shirt was getting caught in the skirt’s closure. “Something’s stuck and I can’t…”

“Sure,” Dick said, rising from his chair to attend to the zipper. This was a very different look for Joan - the skirt was accompanied by seamed stockings and a pair of dressy heeled shoes that were a doubtless a real change from her usual jump boots.

“Fancy date?” he asked, more to keep it from getting awkward than a real desire to know where she was going. He could smell the setting lotion she’d used for her hair, the bit of perfume she’d dabbed behind her ears, and this was making him painfully aware that they were now standing very close together, and if someone (Lewis came to mind, but any of the others, really) were to see them thus, the jokes would be relentless - for the both of them. 

(His hands were right in the vicinity of the usual ‘equipment check’ and he was aware that his knuckles had practically stroked her more than once already. He didn’t want her to think that she could not trust him to do something as simple as undo a zipper - or Annie Sutton would come for his hide. _Don’t ask for what they don’t want to give._ )

“It’s the lecture for Mrs. Frobisher and the Women’s Institute,” she explained with a pained look. “Women’s clubs are usually an older crowd, and they don’t much go in for women in slacks - too casual. So it’s the skirt and pumps today - if the damn zipper will go.”

“I’m going to need a hand,” he said, realizing what he needed to do. “Just hold - there - and that side -” She did as she was told, and finally the teeth released, the shirt came free, and he saw the vaguest hint of the jet-black of her girdle as the shirt rode up a little. She smoothed the shirt inside the waistband and let him pull the skirt closed.

“Thank you,” she said, turning around with much less agitation in her manner, making a couple of minor adjustments to the front of her shirt, the knot in her tie.

There was a certain brightness about her today - her hair was carefully set, and she’d obviously spent a bit of time on her makeup. She was wearing lipstick today, a brighter shade than usual. “You look very nice,” he offered, trying not to sound salacious about it, and she looked grateful.

“Thank you, I think I’ll do.” She turned and offered him a salute. “A grateful nation thanks you, sir. Now I just need my coat and my cover and we’ll be in business.” And with that, she was gone back to her room to retrieve her things, hustling pretty quickly for a woman in heels. 


	55. Moonlight Cocktail - Dick and Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jamie506101: Join me for Joan and Dick :)

They’ve hardly been able to speak to each other all morning, between running around finding things for Kitty and making sure the flowers get placed and taking care of Harry’s absolutely ancient grandmother, who’s a little senile and seems to think Dick is one of her grandsons, or nephews, or something, not to mention getting clotheslined into a conversation with a couple more members of Harry’s family who now ALSO think that Dick Winters is really Dick Welsh and spent more time than necessary gleefully filling him in on fifteen years of family drama.

But finally- finally!- the breakfast is served, and the gifts are opened, and the toasts have been drunk, they’ve managed to lose the family, and there’s Glenn Miller playing in the dining room. “Well?” he says, holding out a hand she’s only too glad to take. “Join me for a minute?” 

No one else here knows them - they’re just two of Harry and Kitty’s friends who came to help with the wedding, and it’s nice, to be anonymous this way, dancing in nice clothes in a nice hotel, his hands around her waist, her hands around his shoulders, her cheek pressed to his, his boutonniere threatening to catch on her dress.

_Couple of jiggers of moonlight and add a star  
Pour in the blue of a June night and one guitar  
Mix in a couple of dreamers, and there you are  
Lovers hail the Moonlight Cocktail_

“Shush, you,” Kitty orders before Harry has a chance to make one of his snide remarks. “Let ‘em have their dance and tease 'em tomorrow.”

Harry gives her a mock salute and wraps his arms around the dress that he dragged half-way across the world to give to her. “Absolutely, Mrs. Welsh.”


	56. Amuse Me: Roe + Billie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wexhappyxfew- amuse me! for anyone u choose!! :)
> 
> Amuse Me: a funny drabble about one character trying to cheer another up.
> 
> You know who I don’t write often? Eugene Roe. You know who could probably use some cheering up? Gene Roe.

Billie’s mother would have said that Easy Company’s medic needed to pull himself together and get on with it.

Billie would have said that Gene was just a little blue today, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that, and there wasn’t any use worrying.

He had a deep melancholy in him, Doc Roe did, a tendency to long stares and thoughtful silences that didn’t have an origin in the war. That was just Gene for you - not loud, not boastful, not showy, but thoughtful, in the war but not of it.

But some days she did worry. That first day back from Normandy, when they were in Aldbourne in the heat of the summer, and the blackberries were fragrant on the vine, and the bees were out making music in the flowers, and everything around them said Peace, Peace, Peace, Gene was sitting outside his billet making a study of a train of ants trying to bring home a lardy cake crumb.

Billie looked at the letter she was trying, unsuccessfully, to write home, and shouted “Hey, Doc!” before slowly beginning to toss her crumpled papers into the air, one, two, three, until they were all in motion, her hands remembering the rhythm of juggling. She threw one up high, did a turn, caught it, and did a ‘Ta-da!’ with her hands.

A smile broke out on Gene’s usually solemn face.“They teach you that in nursing school, Billie?”

“Rotation in the children’s ward,” Billie confirmed with a smile, giving a sloppy bow. “Gotta be able to distract them somehow.” _Good to know it works with medics, too._


	57. Call Me : Niamh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: ‘Call Me’ for any pairing please!!
> 
> “Call Me”: A drabble about one character asking for another  
> More replacements (and mythology references!) because I can. Niamh is on loan from @majwinters .)

Niamh O'Connell grew up with warrior women.

When she was little and her family was still living in a small apartment in Brooklyn, and her siblings were all squirming in the bed beside her sucking their thumbs, she’d wiggle out from under the covers and go tuck herself next to her father in his armchair asking for a story. And Patrick O'Connell, who was tired and footsore himself from standing in court all day, would take a deep breath and wrap his arm around his eldest child’s shoulders, and dig into Lady Gregory’s stories about Cu Chulainn, and the warrior Aoife who nearly bested him in battle and bore him a son, and Emer his wife who beat him at riddles, and the Queen Medb who declared that her husbands be without fear, meanness, or jealousy. 

“That’s where our name comes from, Niamh, _siol cuin,_ the sons of the Hound. We are Cu Chulainn’s people,” he’d say, and Niamh would fall asleep in her father’s chair dreaming of chariots and the great deeds of great men. When she played stickball in the street, she imagined she was Cu Chulainn with his hurley stick ready to kill the hound, and when she ran she imagined she was racing Medb’s chariot. _A geis, a geis! There is a geis upon the men of Ulster!_

Well, fairy stories are all well and good for six year olds, but even a young woman of eighteen can still take stock in ancient warrior queens as she runs a punishing hill or picks her targets at the firing range.

But here, in Holland, she realizes Setanta never ran towards a machine gun on the plains of Connacht, and all the war chariots in the world are no match for a Panzer. On an ordinary street in Holland, she is surrounded by warrior women, the lieutenant who is shouting to move forward, and Sergeant Russo who is shouting her name, _O'Connell, O'Connail, Siol Cuin_ , and they are moving forward, and Niamh is not sure she can be Medb of Connacht any more.


	58. Kotex - Joan + Sobel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junojelli: Waiting impatiently for something - Joan having to weedle supplies for the paragals out of the new battalion supply officer, Sobel!

Joan drummed her fingers on the counter and tried to control her rising temper, waiting for the supply sergeant to return ‘with his superior officer’ so she could 'give her complaint’ directly to him.

She knew full well what was going on. It was what was being ordered, and who had ordered it, that had caused them to magically disappear from stores, and this absolutely wasn’t the time to be petty. But she shouldn’t have been surprised, given who she was dealing with.

“Lieutenant Warren." Herbert Sobel hadn’t improved since his transfer back to Easy Company as the supply officer, and now he was exactly what he had tried to be at Toccoa - the uncrossable king of an indispensable kingdom. "Sergeant Wilson tells me you’re registering a complaint about some supplies.”

She took a breath. “Yes, sir. I submitted the form, in triplicate, before we went to Holland, as Sergeant Wilson requested, knowing that it would take, as he said then, two to four weeks to arrive. I was alerted by the Sergeant’s assistant that my supplies had arrived, and I have come to collect them only to be told they are not here.”

“What’s she looking for?” Sobel asked, and Wilson handed him the requisition. His lip curled. “Those are classified as 'non-essential’ on my schedule. That’s usually three to six weeks." 

"Really." 

Sobel smiled. "Really.”

 _Then you, sir, are a liar, because I remember having personal conversations with several Senators about this, and they specifically wrote provisioning into the appropriations bill saying this was very essential._ “Well, I guess that’s that,” she said with a shrug. “We’ll just have to make do.”

“I suppose you will.”

“You know, it’s a funny thing, being in combat,” she added, knowing full well that he hadn’t seen a lick of action since his idiocy with the court martial had kicked him to Chiltot Foliat. “Once everyone’s done a little bit of bleeding themselves, no one much seems to mind seeing more blood.”

He blanched, knowing full well what she meant by it: _and where are your wound stripes, Captain Supply Forms?_ “Wilson, why don’t you check again - on the back shelf, this time.”

 _Mmmhhmm. There it is. Yes, you go check that ‘back shelf’, Sergeant. See if they turn up._ She tried not to look too pleased as Wilson descended into the back again. Of course he was probably going to sell them under the counter, just like everything else that could fetch a price on the black market here in England. Forget nylons - these had been just as hard to get here too.

Wilson came from the back holding the box like it contained a dead animal, arms straight out in front, fingers just barely touching the case with its bold KOTEX stenciled on the side. Joan resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Men. "Thank you so much for looking again, Sergeant Wilson,“ she said pointedly, taking the crate. "We do so appreciate it. And you’re so kind to offer,” she added, “but I think I can carry this myself.”

And, mission finished, she hefted the box over the counter and headed back to the barracks to pass out her ill-gotten gains. The aspirin ration would be easier - the regimental surgeon had daughters.


	59. Chapter 59

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> easy-company-tradition: D, L, and Y with Dick and Joan (they can be separate lil pieces of writing) I ADORE YOU MERC 💙💙💙  
> D: waking up   
> L: A stolen Kiss  
> Y: Tears

There have been many deaths, but no funerals.

This memorial in Austria is the first since Normandy and the small service in Aldbourne at Saint Michael’s, the first time to really name thier dead. And as Sink reads the names, not just of Easy Company, but all the others, it’s like Dick is… waking up from sleep, realizing that this is not some idle dream. The war is over. They are counting their dead, and the terrible reality of how many they have lost is finally coming home to him. He cannot help the tears, cannot do anything except let them stream down his cheeks, standing at attention and staring forward with blurry precision as Sink goes down the list.

So many names. So many men and women who will not go home.

When the roll is finished, and they have played Taps, and the companies have been dismissed, he doesn’t want to leave. He wants to stay here, forever, in this peaceful place, with the sun and the trees and the flowers. Most of the men are drifting back to town, but some are lingering - and she is there, waiting.

Joan pulls him into the shadow of a tree, and he can see that her own eyes are a little red with crying. Wordlessly, she wipes at his eyes, kissing one salt-burned cheek and then the other, gently pressing him into the bark of the tree. Is this guilt, that he is alive when all these others are dead? That he can have this woman kiss him when so many cannot? He surrenders and lets her tend his wounds, wrapping his arms around her in the way he knows she likes, knowing these, too, are her wounds, her soldiers, her friends. 

That night, as they turn off the lights, and she crawls into his bed in the way that is becoming their routine, they are wounded and grieving together.


	60. Steal Anything: Joan, Spiers, Nixon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junojelli: A flash of anger, tears, a stolen kiss. With Joan and.... SPEIRS

Whatever was going on, Lewis was probably in the middle of it. For starters, he was already laughing.

“Lewis,” Joan demanded, “What did you do?”

“What is it …you think I did?” He asked, trying to manage his amusement.

Oh, my god, where to even start. She was having a little trouble processing it herself, trying to think of a way to describe this in a way that wouldn’t give Lewis more rope to hang her with. (She wasn’t sure what was making her angrier right now, the fact that it had happened or the fact that - damn him - she’d almost enjoyed it.) “Ron just walked up in the courtyard and kissed me!”

Lewis lost it. “Damn, that man really can steal anything. We had a bet and obviously, I was wrong. Oh, Joan, your face…”

He was now laughing so hard he was crying, and it wasn’t helping his case. She wanted to hit him, but that almost seemed too good for him. “Nixon, I want a divorce! On the grounds of …insanity!”

But Lewis only laughed harder, and Joan, fuming, punched him in the arm and stormed off, probably to complain to Marjorie, leaving him to enjoy his joke in peace, wiping his eyes and congratulating himself on a job well done. 


	61. A Fistfight - Joe T + Bill G

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @warriorhealer: G: A fistfight, for Bill Guarnere and Joe Toye

It was Saturday night in Swindon, and Bill was tired of big talkers. He and Joe were waiting for the bus back to Aldbourne, and for the last fifteen minutes, he and Toye had been listening to an 82nd guy try to talk the ear off a poor girl who had wanted nothing more than to get home after what had doubtless been a long day at work. (After one disastrous weekend out, the girls had read them in on the silent code of women who really don’t want anything to do with you - the snapping the cigarette case, the polite nods, the fiddling with the gloves, the crossed arms or legs. “You can’t change her mind, so move on. You’ll make us look bad,” Billie had said on the bus home. “No one likes to be seen with a guy who can’t take a hint.”)

This one kept glancing at her watch and looking for the bus, which the schedule said wouldn’t be along for another fifteen minutes. “I’m gonna say something,” Bill said quietly from the bench, his head a little clearer for the evening’s earlier revels. (They were learning to time thier beers around the schedule for the bus back.)

“Not your fight, Bill,” Joe said, quietly nursing a pretty spectacular headache.

“They haven’t invented one that ain’t mine,” Bill replied with a scowl, before standing and stepping over to the bus shelter so he was talking over the lady’s shoulder. “Hey, pal, you wanna knock it off? You heard the lady. She ain’t interested.”

The 82nd guy turned to get a good look at the competition, snickering a little when he saw the challenger was a whole head shorter than him. “Ain’t interested in you neither, short stuff.”

Bill bristled, but he kept his cool, or at least, some of it, squaring his shoulders a little. “Then maybe we’d both better leave her alone, eh?”

The taller soldier scoffed. “You gonna make me or something?

Bill could have responded verbally, but his fist did the job just fine - the trooper went careening back into the side of the bus shelter. "Where I’m from, we listen when women tell us to get lost.” He looked at the girl in question and gave a brief nod of his head. “Ma'am, I’m sorry to spoil your evening. There’s a seat with us away from this hoodlum if you’d like it.”

She looked a little astonished, but took the hint, moving down the line and taking Bill’s vacated seat on the bench. Joe generously moved over to give her more room, all of them waiting, silently, for the bus to come, three strangers in the dark.


	62. Protective: Dick/Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> easy-company-tradition: Hehehehehe K, The edge of consciousness, with Dick and Joan

He’s got this idea in his head that he needs to protect her.

He’s gotten pretty good about hiding it, but she knows it’s there, lurking underneath his calm. It’s in the way his smile twitches when one of the younger lieutenants thinks she can’t do something when she clearly can, the way he opens doors, the way his hand finds her wrist when a car backfires, in case there really is an explosion and he can pull her away. It’s not that he thinks she’s weak, or incapable - he just does it because he cares, and that is how he shows his love.

Maybe he’s making up for lost time, those thirty five months, give or take a few, where he couldn’t protect her any more or less than he could anyone else.

Well, two can play that game - because she protects him, too.

He’s been having a hard time sleeping, lately, either from stress, which is enormous, or his inability to leave work at the office, which is chronic, or the fact that he is now in a real bed, which is a serious concern. But she is finding that if she climbs into bed and cuddles up real close to him, resting her nose in the swale of his neck, wrapping her arm ever so slightly over his, and just breathes, eventually, he will sleep. Sounder, sometimes, too. It’s like a lullaby, a little bit of white noise to remind him he’s not alone, that she has his back the way she’s always had it.

He will never know that the protection she loves from him the most is what she finds here, on the edge of consciousness, loving the warmth of him. That when she is here she feels useful, that she is needed, that she is safe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dick Winters, Little Spoon, (and the accompanying Joan Warren, Big Spoon) was not something I thought I needed today but HERE WE ARE.


	63. Sweet Dreams: Dick and Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: I, K, and Z with Dick and Joan??
> 
> I. Broken glass.  
> K. On the edge of consciousness.  
> Z. An ending.

Dick woke up on a couch. Honestly, he couldn’t remember if Lew had given him something yesterday or he was just that bone tired, but he hadn’t even been able to make it to his bed. He’d just…pulled up a blanket, closed his eyes, and slept like the dead.

They’d thrown a hell of a party yesterday - bottles and glasses lay everywhere around the room, along with abandoned hats and rumpled jackets. Happy V.E. Day. Happy End of the War.

From across the room he heard breaking glass, and his eyes tried to adjust to the poor light. What time was it, anyway? When had he fallen asleep? He could see someone walking amidst the wreckage, checking on each of the sleeping men - Harry, half in and half- out of an armchair, Lew on a chaise holding a half-drunk bottle like a teddy bear.

It was only Joan. Well, that was all right. Morning wasn’t for a few hours yet. He closed his eyes again and tried to drift back into sleep.

He heard her steps pause near him, his eyes still closed, half-in, half-out of sleep. “Goodnight, Dick,” he heard her say quietly, and he could feel her lips gently press a kiss to his brow, adjusting his blanket and smoothing the hair out of his face. “Sweet dreams.”


	64. Flannel - Dick/Joan - Post-war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junojelli: Fall 1946 - 'flannel' for Dick Winters & Joan's mother.
> 
> For those of you who need this today, I have given Dick Winters the full Your LLBean Boyfriend treatment.
> 
> You are all welcome.

The first time they’d gone out to see Joan’s family for Thanksgiving, Dick spent most of the three day train journey wondering if all the phone calls and negotiations and subtle insinuations about the cost of travel had been worth it.

But when they’d stepped out of the train station in Cheyenne, and seen the sky, it all paid out. “Pretty, isn’t it?” Joan asked, hanging on his elbow while a porter hustled their bags down from the platform.

“Why would you ever leave?”

“Mama didn’t want to raise a country mouse,” Joan said with a grin. “Come on, Mr. Winters, I think that’s us.” She pointed to the uniformed chauffeur standing at the curb with a sign.

The drive out to the Warren house was another twenty minutes by car, the outskirts of town falling away as he listened to Joan trade pleasantries with the chauffeur about the skiing (good this year) the price of gas (terrible since the war ended, everything was going up) and some comments about her mother (“knows how she likes things, ma'am.” “That’s a polite way of putting it.”)

And here was the woman herself, the queen of her domain, standing out on the wide, palatial front porch to welcome them in.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Joan.” Elizabeth Warren was a woman in her prime, iron-gray curls and gleaming pearls above a fashionable but plain dress in a newer style, a woman who knows people look to her for guidance about these things. She and her daughter exchanged kisses, and she turned to her daughter’s husband. “Richard.”

“Ma'am.” No kisses here, or even a handshake - just a polite nod. His own mother was ‘Ethel’ or 'Mother’ to Joan - she had insisted on it- but Mrs. Warren hardly answered to 'mama’ from her own children, let along her son-in-law, and god forbid she abbreviate _his_ name. They left the bags with the chauffeur and followed her inside.

The house was already tastefully dressed for fall - dried grasses and sprays of leaves in the floral arrangement on the sideboard, the linens on the table in the dining room exchanged for shades of green, orange and brown. It hardly seemed lived in - no shoes by the door, no coats or hats on the stand, no half-finished book left on the couch. Out of the corner of his eye Dick saw a maid go by with a cleaning cloth. _A little soul-less._

“I thought I’d take Dick out in the jeep for a few hours- show him around the place.”

“You’ll need to be back by one, dear, we’re at home at three, and I promised people they’d be able to see you.”

Joan sighed - the negotiations had started. _No trip home complete without them,_ she’d promised on the train. _She’ll want to show off her war hero daughter - just you watch._ “We will synchronize watches,” she promised.

This was what happened - every time they were together, Mrs. Warren took every opportunity to show off the women she felt her daughter should have become, or the men she should have married. Wyoming or Washington, didn’t matter - she had a list of friends to invite to dinner and ask pointed questions about the firm, the ranch, the campaign. No one short of a prince or a president was ever going to have done for Mrs. Warren’s daughter, and she made sure he knew it. She’d been like this since the wedding, when, even in full fig dress uniform with clusters, ribbons and his DSC, she’d looked him over and made a sound of only slight approval. A few years on, he liked to think he was used to it - but only seeing her once or twice a year meant there was still a little shock, and here on her home turf was no different.

And much as it pained him, and made Joan complain, Dick knew exactly where Joan had gotten her iron resolve and the stubborn streak he loved so much, and it wasn’t from Fred Warren.

They changed their traveling clothes quickly, swapping suits and pumps for canvas jackets, buttondowns and hiking boots. Joan had a quick word with one of the maids about laying out the dress she’d need for later before they went back downstairs, running, once more, into her mother. “One o'clock, Mother, yes, I know,” Joan repeated, before Mrs. Warren had a chance to say anything. “I have 10:25.”

“10:25, mark,” Dick replied, taking a look at his own watch and the clock on the wall and rolling the hour-hand back. (Three days and who could remember how many time zones had done a number on his timekeeping.)

Mrs. Warren pursed her lips. “A flannel shirt, Joan? He looks like a farmhand.”

Oh, here it came. Dick stayed busy with his watch. “Mother, I am wearing the same thing and I look like a farmhand.”

“Vogue says that plaids are in, for skirts and suitings,” Mrs. Warren said, adjusting her daughter’s collar as though she were ten again. “You look very smart - although I wish you’d do something with your hair -”

“Mother.” Joan’s voice was half a step away from becoming feral. “I’m getting in a jeep to give a tour of a ranch, not hosting a dinner. I will be back at one, as per promised, you will having your darling daughter to show off to Greater Cheyenne society at three. We are going now. Goodbye.” And with that, Joan marched to the back of the house, allowed Dick out the door first, and brought the back door closed behind her with a slam. “Oh, I hate coming home,” she said aloud, looking out at the wide expanse behind the house, the farmfields and the mountains in the middle distance. Dick wrapped his arms around her shoulders, knowing she’d be grateful for the warmth. “Not you,” she amended. “I don’t hate you.”

“Be a long week if you did,” he said reasonably.

She laughed. “And I love you in flannel,” she added, giving him an impromptu kiss on the cheek. “Now, let’s go find a few mud puddles to drive through and come home filthy.”

There was the fractious woman he had married. “Yes, ma'am.”


	65. Thanks-giving - Joan, Lewis, Dick - Post-war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: A scene where Joan talks about her mother and Nix compares her to his father (as far as I can tell he was a fairly mean man). Thanks!!

“Thanks again for inviting us,” Joan said, watching out the window as Dick went to work on the woodpile in the back garden. The day was cold and faintly drizzly, but that wasn’t stopping him - he’d asked about firewood shortly after they’d arrived and wouldn’t take no for an answer when Nix said they had staff to do that. "My mother wanted us out again for Thanksgiving and I just didn’t have the heart to say no outright.“

"No lie too big for my work wife,” Lewis said with a smile. “And it’s not like we don’t have the space.”

“She just…doesn’t see what she does to people,” Joan said, crossing her arms like the room was cold. "He puts on a brave face and pretends it doesn’t bother him, but in her mind he’s just never going to be good enough, and every time we see her…I just see this fear in his eyes.“

"That she’s right?”

“No - worse. That one day I’m going to believe her,” Joan replied. “She wraps it up in something she calls caring, but…god, does it hurt some days, having every single one of your decisions being second-guessed. I just didn’t feel like taking it this year. I wanted to be with people who actually care. About both of us.”

“Well, I’m happy to oblige,” Lew said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and giving her a companionable kiss on the top of the head. “You ought to let your country boy come out here more often,” he added, watching Dick continue to chop wood with a vengeance. “He’s got some steam to blow off.”

“I"m sure some of it’s guilt that we’re not with my family,” Joan sighed. “I just can’t win this, can I? Damned if we do go, damned if we don’t.”

“Oh, leave him be,” Lewis said, unconcerned. “It’s good for him - he’s getting too comfortable at that desk. By the end of the day, he’ll have something to show for his effort, you will have a fevered brow and sore muscles to soothe, and all of us will reap the benefits of his hard work with hot toddies near a fire. Everyone wins.”

“I admire your optimism, Lewis.”

“Optimism - pffft.” Lewis made a noise of dismissal and shook his head, still watching out the window as another perfectly split log flew away from the axe. “At least she says she’s thinking of what’s good for you.” Joan looked at Lewis. “My father never did. It was his world, and we were just living in it. No, not even living,” he corrected. “We were _inconveniencing_ him. I’m not convinced that man ever loved anyone except himself. You met him - you got some idea.”

She had met Stanhope Nixon, more than once, and had heard more stories than she cared to recount. Her mother was mean, but the elder Nixon had been nothing short of cruel, and it wasn’t hard to see how a childhood spent around a man like that would turn a playful, loving young boy into a cynical, scared man who liked to put on a brave face for the rest of the world. “You’re not an inconvenience, Lew.” It was Joan’s turn to wrap her arms around Lewis, pressing her cheek into his shoulder. "You never have been.“


	66. Bonfires - Talbert, Billie, Celia

There was something deliciously forbidden about a bonfire.

It started, of course, with sneaking around looking for the wood, crushed crates from behind the Bell and packing boxes from the mess, and then sneaking out to light the thing, in a dark, dry portion of one of Morgan’s ancient coppices where the WLA girls had dragged rocks and stumps for seats, and, to crown the whole thing off, to produce the forbidden foodstuffs they’d been saving especially for just such an occasion.

“And in honor - in honor of our new friends and the sharing of the ancient tradition of Guy Fawkes night,” Molly said, attempting (and failing) for the gravitas of a Masonic Lodge ceremony, “We have decided to share a very un-ancient American end of summer tradition with all of you.”

“And it’s called what?” Celia Mansell asked, taking the sticky-fingered confection from Billie’s expert hands and trying, unsuccessfully, to take a bite without it spilling everywhere. (After they’d come up a bit short on seats, she was sitting on Tab’s lap, and he didn’t seem to mind the crumbs at all.)

“A S'more,” Billie said with a smile, licking her fingers and sliding another marshmallow onto her stick. “Marshmallow, chocolate, and graham cracker. Or digestive biscuit, in this case. Careful -” she said, as Celia bit down and the cookie crumbled in two. “They’re a bit crumbly.”

“God, this is more sugar than I’ve eaten all year,” Jessie, one of the other land girls, pronounced with delight after a single bite.

“How on earth do you eat one of these?” Celia asked, her hands full of broken cookie, a dab of chocolate on her nose and her mouth an absolute mess of melted marshmallow and cookie crumb.

“That part’s easy,” Tab said with a smile, pulling Celia a little closer on his knee. “With a friend.” And, without any regard for ancient anything, he leaned in and kissed her, prompting whoops and shouts of mirth from the rest of the guys and gals sitting around the fire.


	67. Nice Weather for Ducks - Captain Frobisher, Dick, Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basilone: Do you have an umbrella-sharing prompt yet? ❤ If not, consider.. a torrent of English rain and a pretty drenched someone getting rescued from the rain by someone with an umbrella, leading to a huddled-together walk and..? Any pairing of your choosing. ❤
> 
> Because of the two people I wanted to shove under the umbrella, I decided to take this in a slightly different direction.

oday was, to borrow a phrase he’d heard during the war, nice weather for ducks. Captain Frobisher could hear it now, as clear as day, the Sergeant underneath his poncho and the rain drumming on his helmet. “Morning, sir. Nice weather for ducks, this.” Hawkins, that had been his name. From London. Full of all sorts of phrases that sounded odd to a Wiltshire ear. It had been a long time since he’d remembered the man who said it, but then, he was remembering all sorts of things these days. Whatever had happened to Hawkins? Oliver couldn’t remember. 

It was, indeed, nice weather for ducks - and lovers, too, it seemed, as a pair of them hurried by in the road tucked under a single black umbrella that wasn’t quite big enough for the pair of them. Ah, young love. There was a lot of that in the village now, too. He’d had some opinions about that sort of thing when they’d first arrived, but then he’d seen the column out, coming back from one of their hellish morning runs and singing as they came, and and the only thing he could think was, _my god, they’re so young._ He wasn’t going to grudge anyone their country lanes after seeing those faces.

The Captain was as surprised as anyone, then, when the umbrella paused near his own front gate, tipping back briefly to reveal their own Lieutenant Warren and the tall red-headed chap from her unit - Winters, that was the one.

Well, now, that was new.

He was becoming quite old maid-ish these days - watching the garden path for visitors, taking an interest in everyone who came and went. Was this what it was like, having daughters? Aubrey and John had hardly ever brought girls home (the reader will observe exhibit A, Mama) and one just didn’t worry about boys the same way. Not that Lieutenant Warren was to be worried over - she was a young woman of sound principles and not likely to be misled, and, if memory served him, Winters was the one who’d declined a drink when they’d had them all to dinner.

Still.

“You look quite drowned,” he observed lightly, meeting her in the hallway trying to divest of her raingear.

“And leaving half a lake on the hall rug, too,” she said apologetically. “I"m sorry - I’ll find Grace before it ruins the carpet.”

“Shall I find us some tea?” He asked. “Only thing for it on a day like this.”

“That’d be wonderful, Captain Frobisher,” she said with a smile. “I’ll just go get Grace and then dry myself out.”

“Was that Lieutenant Winters with the umbrella?” he asked over the tea tray, once the carpet had been mopped and she’d been able to remove her muddy boots. He was hoping for polite curiousness, remembering dozens of conversations trying to prise information out of Aubrey about schoolwork, or John about whatever girl he’d been skylarking with in the lane, trying not to seem too interfering, too interested. “Trying to remember all the names, that’s all.”

She nodded. “It’s the hair - you can’t miss him. He’s at the Barneses - insisted we share the umbrella back.”

“How very considerate of him,” Frobisher said, making a quiet study of Lieutenant Warren over the tea things.

“He’s like that,” Joan replied, and he thought he caught the briefest glimpse of a pleased smile over the steam of her tea.


	68. Sweater Weather - Harry, Lewis, Joan, Dick, Captain Frobisher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: Please could you do sweaters + fireplace with Harry Welsh? 👀  
> @easy-company-tradition and you think alike, Nonnie:  
>  Hello I am back to request sweaters with Harry bc he is under appreciated 💙 thanks Merc, have a lovely day!
> 
> Apparently Harry and Sweaters are the new OTP, you heard it here first. (Harry actually is wearing a sweater very much like this in 1.10 during their poker game.)

Harry and the sweater were now inseparable.

It had arrived on Tuesday with the rest of the mail, a homemade knitted vest in that particular pea-green that every woman’s organization in the greater United States had now taken special possession of, and Harry had taken one look and fallen in love.

Of course it had been Kitty that had knitted the thing, and not altogether perfectly, either, but no one could deny that it had been made with love, which was nice, and it was warm, which in the rising English damp was even better.

“I’m going to marry this woman,” Harry proclaimed, sitting in front of the fire in the Frobisher’s front room while Joan sat in front of the fire with a toasting fork and a stack of bread and Dick and Captain Frobisher put a chess board through its paces. There was very little room at the Barneses, where the two of them were staying, and there was something nice about staying in _en famille_ on a Friday instead of going down to the pub - especially since it was still raining. “First chance I get, we’re putting a ring on it.” He glanced down at the edge of the sweater, rubbing at a spot in the hem where she’d slipped a stitch, smiling like a fool. “What about it, Joanie?”

“What, you marry me?” Joan asked with a grin. “Not sure what Kitty would do to me if we tried.”

“No, you goof, getting married in general.”

Joan shrugged and passed him a piece of toast. “Hadn’t ever given it much thought.”

Harry snorted. “Oh, sure, pull the other one,” he said, looking over at Dick and the Captain with a grin. “Good looking girl like you has a whole trail of boyfriends and broken hearts somewhere in Baltimore.”

Joan fiddled with the next piece of toast, rearranging herself on the hearth rug. “Boyfreinds I’ll admit to, and one or two of ‘em came real close, but nothing ever really clicked. Most men are looking for something different in a wife. Sweaters, for instance.”

“So what was Joan Warren’s five year plan?” Harry asked, sitting back in his chair enjoying his snack.

“Before all this?” She sat back on her heels a little. “I was thinking about…applying to be a congressional aide or something, run papers and help dictate policy and be indispensable. Now…I don’t know. I wasn’t ever looking for a traditional life, house and kids and all that. But you can’t just tell a guy that on the first date.”

“What can’t you tell a guy on our first date?” Nixon had helped himself inside, closing the door quickly so all the warmth of the fire didn’t escape. He was a surprise addition to the party - and from the looks of things, there might have been a bottle hidden in his overcoat pocket. “Captain - Dick, Harry.”

“Lieutenant Nixon.” Captain Frobisher rose from his chair and shook hands. “I’ll let you young people get on. Spell me, will you?” he asked, gesturing to his vacated chair. “Lieutenant Winters is reminding me why I don’t play. Night, chaps - Joan can lock up when you’ve all gone.”

“Night, Captain.” “Good night.”

“We were talking about life plans,” Joan explained, after Captain Frobisher had taken his leave. “Toast?”

“Thanks, you’re a darling,” Nixon said, sitting down and studying the chess board. “I thought that was all we talked about on our first date.”

“Ha ha. Very funny.” Joan rolled her eyes. “No, I’ve kind of boxed myself in on the marriage front,” she said, staring into the fire. “In my family one…tends to assume the worst about people - that they’re only being nice to you because they want something. And when I go back stateside, I’ve kind of got a target on my back. Every desk jockey and wanna-be politician in Washington is going to want a piece of the Pershing Princess.” She pronounced the title with disdain. “Good press coverage for his next campaign. Just like my mother always wanted.”

“We’ve just got to find the Princess a knight in shining armor, then,” Harry said with a smile. “We’re going to Normandy. How hard could that be?”

“Harry, please don’t. Say that joke loud enough where a correspondent can hear and they will be combing 7th Armoured for a guy with the last name Knight.”

Lewis looked personally affronted. “God, no, never! If I must lose you, it’s to a paratrooper or no one at all, Joanie. The honor of the regiment demands it.”

Joan only rolled her eyes and went back to her toast, Harry to his contemplation of domestic bliss, and Lewis and Dick returned to the chess game, Lewis taking a minute to familiarize himself with the progress of the game and then diving straight in.

“You doing something with that queen besides feel her up, Dick?” Lewis asked pointedly, and Dick hastily put the piece he’d been absentmindedly handling down. Lewis smirked. “She’s an honest woman and her husband’s right there.”


	69. Whiskey and Fog - Dick and Joan - Post-war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> easy-company-tradition: Happy Thirsty Thursday Merc! Might I suggest whiskey and fog for Dick and Joan? Thank you, and have a lovely day!

The only bad thing about being married to a writer, Dick thinks, is that sometimes they have to take time to actually write.

Joan’s taken what was a throw-away, puff-piece job after the war writing columns on battlefields and war cemeteries into a full time career that puts her work in with the Conde Nasts and Town and Countries of the world. As jobs go, it’s not a bad one. Just busy enough to keep her own her toes, not so busy that she can’t have some quality time with her husband in there, too. Nothing says the writer has to use that expense account alone, right?

They’ve been in the Highlands for a week now, and Joan’s sketched and photographed dozens of castles and cafes and barns and haymows and cows, and now she just has to…sit down and make the article happen. Today’s not a great day for sightseeing anyway, with all the low-hanging fog, so Dick eats breakfast, packs a lunch, and takes himself for a hike on the moor just outside of town.

He likes Scotland, maybe because it doesn’t remind him of anything but itself. It’s an honest landscape, one that doesn’t hide things. It’s rocks and wind and moss and small, stubborn plants that won’t say die, and there’s a stark beauty in all of it. Where they’re staying’s pretty rural, and coming back into town, he can smell peat fires. It feels like a simpler place.

When he arrives back, Joan is just where he left her, parked in front of the big window in their hotel room with her typewriter blazing away, a plaid wrapped loosely around her shoulders. The room’s cold, and sitting in front of that window’s probably not helping. And her feet get cold easily. Tonight will be a good night for a hot water bottle, or those icey toes of hers will keep him up all night.

“That’s enough of that for today,” he says, pouring a finger or so of whiskey into a glass and setting it down next to her sketchpad.

“Five more minutes and I’m done,” she promises, taking a sip of the whiskey to let him know she’s good for it.

“Can I see?” He points to the pad, and she gives a gesture of permission so he can take the pad and she can keep typing.

He loves her sketches - has ever since he watched her try to put Littlecote on a piece of paper. There’s a lightness to what she captures, an energy, the suggestion of a larger whole. She has an architect’s eye for form - which is why he’s surprised to find himself in the sketches, leaning over a gate admiring the distant mountains. That was just yesterday. She’s made him look - ready for something. “My love” she has written in her tiny perfect script on the bottom. He’d touch it, but he doesn’t want to make it smudge.

“I thought you didn’t do people,” he accuses, holding up the pad. She turns around in her chair and smiles.

“I’m trying something new,” she replies. “That one’s not for the magazine.”


	70. Allowed - Dick + Joan

In Austria, she allows him all the things she has spent the last two years routinely shutting down and cutting off from everyone else.

She will sit with him alone in a room without either leaving or finding someone to join them. She will allow herself to sit next to him on the couch instead of finding an armchair - and if he is in an armchair, she will sit on the arm. She will take the second drink, if it is offered, stay up later if he is staying up. And she lets him touch her.

He’s not by nature a touchy person - unlike Lew, who seems to have been raised by either an octopus or an extremely affectionate cat - and the casual intimacy of a pat on the shoulder or a squeezed hand has eluded him for a long time. Now he seeks it out, thrilled at how happy it makes her, a hand resting on her shoulder, a pat on the leg. She is physically affectionate by nature, and he knows this - he’s watched her fix ties and brush coats for the men, hug and wrestle and rest on the shoulders of the women.

One day they’re lingering at the back of the briefing room, out of everyone’s line of sight, and he reaches behind her for something, his hand briefly brushing over her ass. She takes his hand and fixes it over the bodypart in question with a proprietary air, as if to remind him that _yes, this is something you, and only you, are allowed._

He allows himself a brief contraction of the hand, pulling her ever so slightly towards him, and she makes a low, surprised noise in her throat, her eyebrows rising slightly, face still impassive. No one’s heard them. He watched someone else do this, once, someone who hadn’t asked, who didn’t know her, and it confused him then. It thrills him now.

It’s rather fun being allowed, isn’t it?


	71. Not Thirsty - Ruth, Doris, Joe T

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> junojelli: THIRSTY THURSDAY! Crack open the wine. I offer up this vintage: Joe Toye and Ruth, and 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' from the 1941 musical Pal Joey 🍷 Juno xx

It was like she just …wasn’t thirsty.

A fine state of affairs, wasn’t it, when you were in Swindon on a Saturday night, and you’d finally found a bar you liked, where the music was good and the light was good and the people were good and plenty of guys wanted to buy you a beer, and you just…didn’t feel like drinking.

“Hey, Ruth,” Doris came over looking concerned. “You’re not dancing. Wrong shoes?” Some men would say no one wanted to dance with a girl in jump boots, but if Deitrich could make bloused pants sexy, so could they.

Ruth shook her head. Doris studied her friend a moment and then turned back to the room to do a quick assessment. “Well, use your words, tell mama what you want. I’ve got…couple of pilots, an off-duty fireman with the sweetest accent and arms to die for, and if you really wanted to raise hell, there’s one or two guys here from Armored who look like they’d be good for a few rounds. So. Who am I bringing back to this barstool?”

“No one.”

Doris planted herself and fixed her friend with her best no-nonsense stare. “Ruth Shapiro, it is Saturday and you have forty-eight hours to yourself and I refuse to let you sit here moping into your beer.”

But Ruth wasn’t moping - she was watching the front door, which had just opened to admit two more of the 506’s finest, looking like a million dollars in their dress uniforms.

“Hey, we miss anything?” Joe asked, looking around at the bar and the warm, heady glow of the crowd.

“Yeah,” Doris said with a quiet grin, studying the way Ruth had followed Joe into the bar and then, just as quickly, let her gaze leave him. “Ruth was just telling me she’s thinking about going after that guy over there from Second Armor.”

“Ruth, you want to dance so bad you’ll take a tanker, let me,” Joe said, pulling her off the barstool and positively not taking no for an answer.

“Damn, she’s got it bad.”

“What?” Bill obviously hadn’t heard her, too busy paying the bartender for a beer. Doris waved him off, trying to remain unconcerned as she watched Ruth’s smile widen in a way that wasn’t just being polite, a totally different woman from the one who’d been sitting on the barstool. Bewitched, bothered and bewildered indeed.


	72. The Very Thought of You: Dick + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anthrobrat: Hello Thirsty Thursday! I have fallen for Dick and Joan- could you do something for them with “The Very Thought of You”???

_I’m living in a kind of daydream  
I’m happy as a king  
And foolish though it may seem  
To me that’s everything_

They’re not particularly elegant hands.

At one point, he’s sure, the nails were manicured and painted, but now they’re only clipped short, just like the manual for field hygiene states they should be. But they were elegant, once, the kind of fingers you put rings on, leading to the kind of hands you hold on Saturday night dates, ending in the kind of wrists that really ought to come with bangles and bracelets. None of those here, though - the sleeves are rolled and one wrist is clad in a very serviceable looking men’s watch with a leather band, clasped on the very last hole and floating a little on the wrist that’s really too slim for it.

It’s easier, watching her hands. It’s a middle distance across the table, easy enough to discard or discount. He doesn’t have a mind for poker - he was done with the game a few cards ago, and his own hand is pretty near worthless. But coming out to the pub tonight was worth it, if only to watch her shuffle and deal and bicker with Harry over whether or not she’ll let him out of the table so he can grab another beer. It’s times like these where he can almost see her at home, in a house that looks like his parents’, dealing a hand of bridge and bringing around a tray for coffee. 

He hears his name, and it takes him a moment to he remember he belongs to it. “Are you still playing, Dick?” Harry asks, shuffling the cards again. “Or are we just going to let you keep daydreaming?”

Dick smiles, tosses in his cards, takes a sip of his soda. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m out.”

“I’ll say,” Lew scoffs from across the table, and Dick wonders what he means by it.


	73. A Good Friend - Buck, Frankie, Malarkey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> easy-company-tradition: I’m back 😈 “Lenore” by Edgar Allan Poe for Frankie and Buck, please! 💙💙💙

_For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,_  
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes–  
The life still there, upon her hair–the death upon her eyes.

She should have known someone would come - and should have guessed that it’d be him. She’d kept her ear out for news, but looking at him now, she could see that the stories she’d heard hadn’t lied - they’d been in it, and no mistake. The man in front of her now was hangdog, down at heel, and hurting every inch as much as she was sure his friend was. And she had to tell him no. 

"Don, it was real sweet of you to come all this way, and I hate to have you make that trip back alone, but I’m the last person he wants to see right now.“

"That’s not true,” Malarkey said defiantly. “If you could just - spend some time with him…He’s hurting, Frankie. He needs someone he knows, and I thought - ”

“I know,” Frankie said, trying to be gentle, trying not to think about a huge pair of shoulders that twelve months ago had held up her world. “I know what you thought, Don, and I know how he’s hurting.” _God, do I know. I see it here every damn day, just like I’ve been seeing it for the past three years, good, solid, men chewed up and spat back out by this damn war._ "And you know just as well as I do Buck doesn’t want anyone to see him when he’s down.“ She sniffled, wondering if she should ask, wondering if she even wanted to know. She knew the pathology, knew the manifestations and the forms. "He won’t even listen to you read my letters.” she said. “Am I right?

Don’s lips were trembling, his eyes squinting, trying to stave off tears, and he nodded, finally, and then the dam broke, and he let himself cry. Frankie wrapped her arms around the sergeant and gave him a good hug, her own cheeks wet, too. "You tried, Don, and you are such a good friend for trying,” she reassured him, rubbing his back. “But he needs other help before he’ll take ours.”


	74. Vergissmeinnicht - Speirs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dreamingundone: For Thirsty Thursday, how about "For here the lover and killer are mingled/ who had one body and one heart." from Keith Douglas's "Vergissmeinnicht" for.... Speirs and the OC of your choice! (Unless your interpretation of the poem fits another member of Easy better - you pick!)

He’s not the same man he was a month ago. Where once was only pale, unmarked skin, now there are scars, and where once laughter, now only silence that he will not explain. A darkness has woken up in him, a beast that, now unchained, will wander in him forever.

He has been to a place where she cannot follow him, and after they’ve made love, as he sleeps, she tries to reason out where he has been, turning over the knicknacks in his pockets, the bits of other mens’ lives that he’s somehow considered valuable. Rings, watches, a pearl-handled knife. A photograph of someone else’s sweetheart - Steffi, it says on the back, along with a long word in German she can’t read. There’s a stain in the corner that she just knows is blood.

“See anything you like?”

She didn’t mean to wake him up - she’s not sure what he’ll do to her, finding her like this. She has so many questions she knows that he won’t answer. So she tries an easy one, and holds up the photograph. “What’s this?”

He sits down in the chair next to her, naked save for his shorts. “We were in a field just outside of Carentan,” he said. “Come across this dead German - kid, really, couldn’t have been more than eighteen, nineteen. Her age. He’d been out for a bit - flies had already started, something’d…taken a bit out of his face. But he was holding this beautiful gun - looked like he’d just polished it. And she was sitting there in his hand - taken it out to look at her while he died.” He shrugged. “Seemed like a shame to leave her to watch him rot.”

She nods, wondering why she asked, why she made him tell the story. “Come back to bed,” he says, more order than suggestion, and she obeys. Somewhere in Germany, she knows, Steffi is staring out a window, wondering when her lover will come home. Someday she may be Steffi herself, and she must keep her lover while she can. 


	75. Dream a Little Dream - Billie, Bill G, Babe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> youretheobiwanforme: Bartender! Would I be able to get a 'Dream a Little Dream of Me' with Billie?

_Stars shining bright above you  
Night breezes seem to whisper, I love you  
Birds singin’ in the sycamore trees  
Dream a little dream of me_

_Say nighty-night and kiss me  
Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me  
While I’m alone and blue as can be  
Dream a little dream of me_

She’s kinda perfect, ain’t she?

In his dreams, they’re dancing at Lou’s, downtown, and her hair is up nice, and she’s wearing one hell of a dress - or is it her dress uniform? It changes, sometimes. Sometimes it’s a skirt and sometimes pants and sometimes this sleek black dress that has no resemblance whatsoever to her class A’s. He’d asked her, once, where she’d grown up in Philly, and when she’d said, he’d known exactly where - the side of town where guys like him and Bill mowed the lawn and delivered the milk and didn’t talk to the girls who sat on the porch.

Not that it made her stuck up! She was just about the least stuck-up person he knew. And talented, too, not just one of those girls who only know how to look good. She’d been a nurse, and she’d run a rivet gun at the Navy Yards, and she’d qualified as a paratrooper, which was three more careers than most guys he knew. And her ma still didn’t seem to think she’d amount to anything, which was plain dumb any way you looked at it. 

From where he was sitting, she was a whole lot of everything.

“Hey, Babe, we going or what?" Oh, that smile. He’d follow that smile anywhere.

"Or you just gonna sit there dreaming all day?” He must have been smiling himself, or Bill wouldn’t be riding his ass about it - and smirking himself.

“Yeah, we’re going!” he said, grabbing his pack and his rifle.

“You got everything?” Bill asked, watching him hitch his pack onto his back and adjust the fit. “Your brain, for instance?”

He nodded and shoved Guarnere off, and the Italian went on his way grinning. _Yeah, better make sure I have that. She’s a smart girl, Billie Mitchell. Ain’t gonna fall in love with a fool, that’s for damn sure._


	76. Birthday Kisses - Joan + Lewis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have another drabble on this subject queued up for Nixon Week, but here, have a little silliness for a birthday.

It was the magical hour for turning carriages back into pumpkins. “Are you sure we can’t tempt you to stay out later?” Lewis asked, walking towards the door of the Bell with Joan. “Favor to the birthday boy and all that?”

“One crazy party’s enough for the month for me, thanks,” Joan replied. Last week they had raised all kinds of hell for Harry’s birthday, and if the truth were told, some of them were still recovering. “Besides, there’s at least two women in that bar with an eye to the main chance and I don’t want to cramp your style.”

Lewis rolled his eyes - he’d already seen one, a rather lovely looking blonde. “And why would I want them when the prettiest girl in town’s already talking to me? We could just leave these losers and start a different party somewhere else - you, me, a bottle, my bed.”

She rolled her eyes. “Flattery will get you everything, Mr. Nixon,” she said with a half-amused smile, stepping in just a little closer. “Except that.”

And just like that she had kissed him. Not on the lips, that wouldn’t have been her style, but more in the suggestion of the French verb _baiser,_ a lingering kiss on the cheek that was slightly cooler than love, slightly warmer than peace. “Happy birthday.”

“Did you get a letter from Katherine for that?” Lewis asked. There had been a kiss, wholely unexpected, conveyed from Kitty to Harry via letter to Joan, which caused its own fair share of whoops and hollers upon its delivery in the bar.

“No,” Joan said with an abbreviated smile. “That one was just from me. Now, don’t stay out too late, and try remember you’re married. I’ll come by tomorrow to make sure you’re not dead.”

And, wisdom dispensed, on went the cap and she was heading out into the chill of the September evening, hands in her pockets as she walked back to the Frobishers. Lewis chuckled and watched her go for a moment before turning back to the bar and the warm, raucous party inside.


	77. Oh, Watch Me: Harry + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dreamingundone: From your seasonal prompt generator (so cool, by the way): could you do "cool evening walks" for our man Harry Welsh + the OC of your choice? (Or Kitty, because let's be real: the man is in love.)

“You know, if we keep doing this, people are going to talk.”

This time it’s Joan’s turn to laugh out loud, something she hasn’t allowed herself to do in a very long time. It’s their habit, now, to walk back into town together and discuss the day’s lecture or exercise. The walk back to town from Littlecote isn’t all that far, and the fall color is worth enjoying. Dick likes to keep himself to himself and Meehan’s happy to leave them to it - but the idea that suddenly somehow someone is going to get the idea that Harry and her are an item is… 

“Harry, the only way people would start talking was if you suddenly stopped mentioning Kitty. _Then_ we would have a problem. Until then, I think we’ll be just fine.”

Harry takes a few more steps in silence. “Am I really that bad?”

She thinks for a moment. “It’s not… _bad_ , Harry, it’s…” she searches for a word, and he stops, staring at her with one of his _No, really, give it to me straight_ stares. “Okay, so, it is pretty bad,” she finally admits. “But it’s endearing! At least I think it is - and I know some of the girls agree with me.” She’s treading water, and she knows it. A depressed Harry is just about the worst look in the world - like taking away a child’s ice cream cone. “Look, Harry, some of them have guys at home and it’s…nice to think about someone being that crazy about us. You’re an aspiration. And we’re all truly very jealous of Kitty, because she’s exceptionally lucky to have you.”

This seems to have placated him, at least a little - in fact, it may have been a bit of overkill - his smile is looking a little too sleek. “Jealous. I’m going to tell her you said that,” he says decisively. “‘Joan Warren is jealous of you and thinks you’re lucky.’ It’s going in my next letter.”

“You know I’ve got her address, too,” Joan reminds him. “I’ll write her and tell you you shacked up with Celia. And she likes me, Harry, she’d believe me.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Oh, watch me, Harry.”


	78. Early Birds: Maggie + Joan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basilone: Okay, soooo.. your new prompt generator gives me life! =) I'm usually superbad at thinking of prompts, so this is helpful. How about quiet cool dark early mornings for my girl Maggie Paquin?

“Wouldn’t have taken you for an early bird, Paquin.”

Maggie jumped a little, hardly realizing that she’d have company. She’d thought it would just be her, out here admiring the sunrise, but here was Lieutenant Warren, jogging up in her PT clothes and admiring the view. She knew that the Lieutenant was an early riser, and that sometimes Hannah would join her for her customary morning run - but her friend wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Maggie tried not to stare at the great mass of scar tissue on the lieutenant’s leg, peeking out from her PT shorts, but the Lieutenant hadn’t noticed the staring - she was too busy catching her breath and admiring the view. “Sorry about that,” she added, after a while, looking over at Maggie. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, ma'am, it’s just - I think you’re the only one who can say my name,” Maggie said. “Everyone else just calls me Packin.”

“All that French I learned for lettering dinner menus is finally paying off,” the Lieutenant replied with a wry smile. “I don’t think all of that’s just mispronouncing your name, though. Doris tells me some of that’s from being a fine shot - that it’s just as much ‘packing heat’ as Paquin.” Maggie allowed herself a brief moment of wonder to realize her sergeant had been talking about her (and her shooting!) to her Lieutenant - and that the Lieutenant thought enough of her to remember it. “It’s nice to have a nickname,” Warren went on. “Means you’ve been here long enough for people to care about you. You’ve heard mine, I’m sure.”

“I’ve heard Sergeant Gordon call you Joanie, ma'am.”

She snorted. “Well, that is one, but no - when I first joined up, I was Saint Joan.”

Now, there was a name that Maggie knew all too well. Impossible to grow up a girl with French speaking parents and not know her - her mother had nearly made her make Jeanne her confirmation name. She couldn’t count the number of prayer cards she’d gotten before she shipped out with the Maid of Orleans on them and earnest entreaties in the mother tongue on the back. “Because you were going to save France, ma'am?”

“Because I was a stuck-up prig who didn’t know how to have fun on a Friday,” the lieutenant replied flatly, her smile admitting that some of that just might have been true. “And the name fit. The France bit came later. But now I don’t hate hearing it. Anyone who calls me that usually does so with some love. Helps that it’s not all the time now, though. Now, the Pershing Princess - _that_ can go crawl in a hole and die,” she added, still deadpan, “But I’ll keep Saint Joan a while. And I’ll keep Packin’, too, if I can. I need every good shot I can get.”

“Absolutely, ma'am,” Maggie replied, loving the nickname even more.

“Enjoy the rest of your morning, Maggie,” the Lieutenant said, stepping off back down the road and leaving Maggie alone with the chill of the morning and a lot to think about, about nicknames, and belonging, and her next letter home to her mother. Would she take her daughter’s war any better if she told her she was following Saint Joan?


	79. Signed and Sealed: Marjorie, Niamh, Doris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jamie506101: Have another thirsty Thursday prompt cause I’m thirsty 😊 E. Signing a document for the replacements!

Marjorie didn’t know what she was walking into the middle of, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to - but that was one of the joys of being in charge, wasn’t it? Doris had gone by looking ready to kill someone, clearly walking away because she knew that murder wasn’t an option, which left whoever she’d been about to murder as Marjorie’s problem.

“Everything okay in here?” she asked, stepping into the stable and looking around for the dead body.

O'Connell, looking the surliest of the bunch, spoke first. “Sergeant Russo’s been riding our ass about this life insurance thing, is all.”

Oh. Yep, that would get Doris started, all right. Marjorie thought about her next words pretty carefully. “Look, I get it. You’re young and bullets are only for the guy in the war movie next to you. But you learn really quick that that sometimes, you’re the guy next to someone else.” She looked around at the group of replacements, her face serious, remembering other faces at other tables, just as young and just as ready for war - faces now buried in anonymous fields in France. “We lost a lot of good people in Normandy who didn’t sign their policies, and sometimes that smarts some for Sergeant Russo, that’s all. They were her friends, and they were mine, too. Now, ten thousand dollars isn’t enough to bring you back from the dead - but I think you all know it would help your folks out some. So…take ten minutes today, sign it, and go have it notarized. It’ll make her feel better - and it’ll make you feel better too.”

“Isn’t it kind of tempting fate, though, Sergeant?” That was Schwartz - the soft-spoken Milwaukee girl.

“I don’t think so,” Marjorie replied. “We all signed up to die, one way or another. Might as well get compensated for it.” She looked around, hardly caring what they thought of that - it was the truth, plain and simple. “PX is open until five, I think, for the notary. It’s just ten minutes.”

And, cold hard truths dispensed, she went to go see if she could find Doris and talk her into going for a beer.


	80. Nurse Me: Annie Sutton + Lillian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: nurse me with annie and lillian?? 🥺🥺

“And how does the other guy look?” Lillian asked, taking a look at Annie’s face and then surveying the red, split skin of her knuckles.

“Worse.”

Lillian looks like she wants to laugh, but she’s keeping the serious face on as she dabs at the split skin of Annie’s cheek, a hit that will definitely leave a bruise. This is becoming a regular thing, where Annie rolls back in from an evening out having just beat someone up and Lillian pulls the medical kit out from under her bunk to make sure she doesn’t bleed to death. “What was it this time?”

“Some guy wouldn’t stop feeling up Elsie.” Elsie is one of their fellow WACs, a tiny shy thing from Indiana whose Midwestern nice and inability to say no is just the kind of thing soldierboys from the lower 48 love to stomp into the dirt. Annie doesn’t have a lot of time for men who stomp on women, particularly the tiny shy things like Elsie, who is a tremendous typist and deserves the world - and the cute glances she keeps getting from Bob the supply clerk, who’s also shy. What’s the point in being the Women’s Middleweight Boxing Champion of Fort Des Moines if you can’t put a couple of chumps in their place every once in a while?

“And you needed to be her knight in shining dress uniform?”

“Need to teach her how to speak up for herself, more like,” Annie grouses. Yeah, maybe it’s true, Annie’s got a thing for underdogs - except for Lillian. Lillian’s never needed help with a thing in her life.

Lillian doesn’t disagree, just continues to apply her bandages and tape. They’re alone, and the door is closed - and just before she packs the kit away, she leans over, and presses a kiss on top of Annie’s bruised cheek. “To make it better,” she says, beaming at her, and it is all the medicine she needs in the world.


	81. Mourn Me: Buck + Frankie - Post-war

When his roommate had said there was ‘a hell of a brunette’ waiting for him in the hall, he was thinking it was the girl from Friday night at the bar, not - her.

God, what a woman! Peacetime looked good on her, as did real clothes - a suit in a practical shade of taupe and a hat that managed to bring out the color of her eyes and make her look like a million dollars at the same time. But other than the clothes, not much had changed - she was still the woman he remembered, and all of a sudden, he …didn’t remember what words were. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself,” she replied.

“Lynn, you gonna introduce us?” Bob was wining and dining on the sudden appearance of the old girlfriend, who was, as the phrase went, a _dish._

“Bob, this is…Frankie Horgan. She, um…we met during the war. Frankie, this is my, my roommate, Bob Talbot.”

“You some kind of Red Cross Hostess or something?” Bob asked with a grin.

“Nurse, evacuation hospital,” Frankie replied with a smile, one of those 500 kilowatt, charm you into submission jobs she’d used on poor schmucks in the hospital who needed to take their pills or else. “Bob, could you be a dear and give us a minute? In private?”

Bob was only too happy to comply, leaving them alone on the front step with a grin. Buck watched him leave and cleared his throat. “Suppose Marjorie gave you my address.”

“Suppose she did. She says you’re doing well for yourself in law school.” She allowed herself a smirk. “You always did have a mouth on you.”

Oh, he’d missed this - had missed her. “And you, you’re…you’re doing well?”

“I’m still Frankie _Horgan,_ if that’s what you’re asking, Buck.”

It _was_ what he’d been asking, damn her. She always could see right through him. “Why did you come here, Frankie?”

“Because I made a mistake, and I need to fix it.” She took a breath. “That winter, in Bastogne - Don came, Marjorie came, hell, even Dick Winters came, and every single one of them said 'You have to come see him, Frankie, he needs you.’ So I did, and you said, at the time, that you weren’t in a fit state to be a husband, or even a friend, and that I should just give you up for dead. I was a coward, and I complied. Well, I refuse to do so any longer. You will not be dead to me, Buck Compton. You will be very much alive, and I don’t care if it takes me two months or twenty years, but I will at least be your freind again, if I can’t be anything else to you, because I failed in that the first time, leaving you alone, and I’d like an opportunity to make it right.”

She took an opportunity to take a breath, fixing him with one of her stares, and Buck felt something in him break. He remembered that day, remembered sending her away, and it was as bitter now as it had been then. There were tears in his eyes and he didn’t much care, because she was bringing back a lot of things he hadn’t thought about in a long time, things he’d buried under his books and his papers and his long hours in the library, about Belgium, about Bill and Joe and all those other guys who hadn’t made it home. It was a long time ago now, and he’d finally made his peace with it - mostly made his peace, anyway. The last thing he’d needed was…Frankie.

He was thinking, now, of how magnificent she was when she was angry, how beautiful she’d become after peacetime had allowed her to gain ten pounds and wear clothes that fit, how much he’d missed seeing her face, how much he didn’t want to screw this up like he’d screwed up so many other things. “Are you sure you aren’t going to law school, too?” he asked, sniffling and taking a moment to wipe at his eyes. “You always could win an argument.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got a job in the city - live-in nurse. Pay’s pretty terrible, but the hours are okay.”

“So, how do you want to play this?”

“We could start over,” Frankie suggested. “There’s a bar down the street with a darts board.”

“It’s kind of a college place,” he said, suddenly feeling shy about taking Frankie to his local dive, where everyone knew him.

“Aren’t you kind of a college guy?” she replied. He couldn’t argue with that. “You could shake the joint up a bit by bringing a sophisticated older woman along - show those co-eds what they can aspire to.”

And all he could do was laugh - because the alternative was to be angry about all the opportunities for laughs he’d missed.


	82. Churches - Lillian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wexhappyxfew: finally had time to stop by after a crazy day and if you’re up for it!!! warm afternoon sunshine and my lil girl lillie schwartz?

Lillian loved churches.

She’d gone with Niamh, one Sunday, to one of the Roman Catholic churches in Swindon, with scarves over their hair. It had been like visiting a foreign country, with the priest speaking Latin and the smell of incense, the bells ringing at strange intervals so the people could stand or sit. But there’d been a - a strange beauty to it, the starry heavens painted on the church’s ceiling, and Christ, with his all-seeing eyes, peering down from behind the altar, the line of dark-coated women going up to receive the sacrament on their tongue, reverently crossing themselves as they did so.

It had been so different from her church at home, built without flourish or ornament in the plain, workaday style that Luther had long ago decreed. But something about the glass and stone tugged at something in her, suggested the divine could indeed be lurking in the arches of the ceiling, like a wayward angel, or a puff of smoke. This church, too, was like that, old and dark and full of collected mysteries, the walls filled with tablets and memorials for men and women long dead, their lives immortalized in stone. She read them all with fascination, wandering down the aisle until she reached the pulpit, where, nearby, the solemn brass on the wall declared:

SACRED TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF THE GALLANT MEN OF THIS PARISH WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES FOR THE EMPIRE IN THE GREAT WAR

And then the list of names, on and on in tiny type - too many for just one village, just one war. There were tablets for the Crimea, the Boer War - ten names, seven. This list seemed limitless by compare, family names repeated and repeated - were they cousins? Brothers? Had Mother and Father lost all their sons in the same war? The same day? The plaque gave no dates - only the names in two-columned marching order, ending with the invocation FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH MAY THEY REST IN PEACE.

There was a list like this, somewhere, for the regiment - and she realized, shivering, that was only here because someone else’s name had been added to it. 

Enough of this - it was too early for these things.

Outside, the sun was just coming out again, and Lillian closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of late summer on her cheeks, relishing the smell of the churchyard with its tall grasses, the lichen on now-warm stone. The leaves were just starting to think about changing here in Aldbourne - and it would be a sight when they did.


	83. A Moment's Respite: Niamh, Maggie, Lillian, Hannah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jamie506101: A moment’s respite for the replacements!

It was almost normal, the scene they were in - some hot food, a couple of beers, a roof over their heads for the night, the whole thing sitting at a strange intersection between home and war. And in the middle of it, this great big wolf of a dog that had followed Talbert home and now just wouldn’t get.

“Hell of a dog, Tab,” George said, watching Niamh and Hannah croon to the animal and scratch behind its ears, smiling as they knelt on the floor, two girls enjoying the simple joy of an animal who knew only how to love, his tongue lolling as if he, too, were smiling.

“Think I’d stay, too, if I had a cute girl scratching my head,” Popeye said with a grin.

“You watch your mouth, boy,” Doris said threateningly from across the room, halfway through her dinner. Maggie tried not to laugh at her sergeant, the short Italian woman looking at Popeye with the proprietary air assumed by most mothers. (Popeye’d known Doris long enough to take her glare seriously, and refrained from further comment.)

“I think he likes you,” Talbert says, almost approvingly, sitting down and stretching his feet out.

“Never had dogs growing up,” Niamh said, scratching the German Shepard between the ears, still smiling at his big, floppy-tongued grin of an expression. “Never had a house big enough.”

And then, just as soon as it was warm and homey - boom. A door flew open, cracking on its hinges, and the peace exploded.

“Out of the way, everyone, make a hole!” “What the hell.” “It’s Alley!” And so it was - staggering, bleeding, Alley, strung out between Lesnewski and Liebgott, himself also bleeding. “All right, get him on the table.” Doris nearly flipped out of her chair, taking her mess tin with her, and Maggie found herself scooping everything she could reach into her arms and tripping backwards, out of the way. “I got this, Alley, you’re gonna be fine. Get Doc Roe!”

A bottle from her collection fell and broke, but didn’t seem to make a sound, at least not in a way that anyone cares. And why should they, when Alley was lying on the table glistening with blood, his eyes wide and terror-stricken. Maggie could only stare, feeling powerless, her arms full, watching the wound in Alley’s side pulse and flow as the room around him sprang into action, first platoon going for guns and ammo and lieutenant Welsh, ready for whatever was waiting for them at the crossroads in the dark.


	84. Back To The HedgerowS:  Dick & Joan - Postwar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basilone: Back To The Hedgerows for Dick & Joan?

They’d talked about the assignment extensively before she’d said yes - going, not going, about spectacle and substance and being genuine.

In the end they went - plane to Paris, a bus out to Bayeux, studying the landscape as they went. It was a pretty country - he’d hardly had time to appreciate that last time.

Joan had done most of the planning, taking phone calls at odd hours of the morning with guides and hoteliers, trying to keep her voice quiet in the study as Dick listened, half-asleep in their bedroom, to her speaking French, trading remarks about the weather and the caller’s children before she would say, Bien, aux affaires, and her voice would change.

And here, in the market square where the bus dropped them, must have been one of the men with whom she had spent hours on the phone, a Frenchman of that middle-aged, paunchy farming type who could be found at every village bar with his beret, his glass of calvados and his boules game. This specimen, however, was smiling - a sentiment rarely seen on _le fermier typique de Normandie._

“Madame le Captaine Winters!” He met Joan with the traditional _bises_ , her chic wool jacket in strong contrast to his well-broken coat, town and country working in strange unison.

“Allo, Benoit, ca va?”

“Ca va bien, merci, tres bien, et mieux maintenant que vous etes là. Et ca, c'est Commandant Winters - bienvenue, monsieur.” Benoit said, shaking with both hands. “C'est un plaisir, un vrai plaisir.” He must have noticed Dick’s pained and polite silence, because he clapped his hands together and smiled apologetically. “I forget my manners, my apologies, your husband does not speak French. It is an honor, sir, a great honor to have you both here.”

“Thank you for having us.”

“I was joking with my wife this morning that we will have to get your husband a beret, so he will not - the sore thumb? Stick out? Mais la hauteur americane! So tall.” He laughed at his own joke. “One forgets - but not all. Now come! We have a big day, many people to meet - to make up for the reception last time, ne c'est pas?” He laughed again at that, and took Joan’s bag, and Joan looked back at Dick and smiled, taking his hand and giving it a friendly squeeze. It would be fine, going back to the hedgerows. They would be among friends - and just as before, they would have each other.


End file.
